Court Opinion

ID: 9752036
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 17:30:21.021279+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:51:44.033179
License: Public Domain

SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
I regret that I am unable to join my colleagues in sustaining the agency’s imposition of sanctions against Banks for allegedly deceptive trade practices. It is questionable, in my view, whether there is sufficient evidence in the record to support the relief granted. Assuming that there is sufficient evidence, the findings of the Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) are woefully inadequate to enable this court to carry out its responsibility to conduct meaningful judicial review.
I.
I agree with my colleagues that Banks’ failure to repay the money advanced to him by Hodges has not been shown to be an unlawful trade practice proscribed by the Consumer Protection Procedures Act (CPPA). The retention of the fee was not a representation at all, and therefore could not be a misrepresentation. I disagree with the apparent suggestion at page 12 of the majority opinion that by not repaying Hodges, Banks may have “implicitly misrepresented a material fact — that he performed services for the $800.” As my colleagues point out later, at page 13, Banks may have refused to return the money because of insolvency or just plain orneriness. In any event, there is no evidence that Banks made any representation, true or false, explicit or implicit, on this particular subject.
This leaves the charge that Banks misrepresented his qualifications and status as a non-lawyer, allegedly in violation of three different provisions of the statute (each of which violations supposedly warrants a separate penalty). The majority has summarized the record evidence on this aspect of the case as follows:
Banks told Hodges that Hodges had an Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) case and that Banks would begin preparing the package to file with EEO. Banks added that Hodges’ situation was critical, time was of the essence, and they had to start immediately. Banks also told Hodges that Banks was an “administrative advocate,” that he had worked for a judge, and that he was handling a number of cases. Banks said that Hodges did not need a lawyer because Banks was an expert in this particular field. When asked whether he thought Banks was a lawyer, Hodges responded:
He — no, well I don’t think he was a lawyer per se, but I thought he was like a legal representative or someone with experience in this particular field of Job Protectors, you know, the filing of the motions and the write-ups and to get me through without paying — because what he indicated to me I did not necessarily need a lawyer because he knew more *441about this type of thing than anybody else. That is what his profession was, Job Protectors.
Which part of this recitation is supposed to establish a material misrepresentation is unclear. Banks allegedly said he was an administrative advocate, but there is nothing in the record to suggest that this was untrue. He is said to have claimed to know a lot about equal opportunity complaints — more than anyone else knows, in fact — but surely such “puffing” is not a violation of the Act.1 Hodges testified that Banks told him he did not need a lawyer, but there was no evidence that Hodges in fact did need one to file a complaint of racial discrimination in employment. At the very least, the record as to any misrepresentation is opaque and amorphous, and it was therefore especially important for the finder of fact to identify any specific misrepresentation with particularity.
II.
We recently reiterated in Cruz v. District of Columbia Dep’t of Employment Servs., 633 A.2d 66, 70 (D.C.1993) that, in reviewing agency action under the District’s Administrative Procedure Act, we inquire
(1) whether the agency has made a finding of fact on each material contested issue of fact; (2) whether substantial evidence of record supports each finding; and (3) whether conclusions legally sufficient to support the decision flow rationally from the findings.
(Citations omitted). In the present case, the first inquiry must, in my view, be answered in the negative, and this precludes any fruitful analysis of the second and third questions.
The ALJ’s findings of fact are not supposed to be perfunctory; rather, they must reflect “a meaningful attempt to come to grips with the difficult factual questions raised by this record.” Eilers v. District of Columbia Bureau of Motor Vehicle Servs., 583 A.2d 677, 685 (D.C.1990). The only finding made by the ALJ which purports to deal at all with deceptive practices on Banks’ part — Finding of Fact No. 2 — reads as follows:
During consultation, the Respondent, trading as Job Protectors, Administrative Advocates, represented to Complainant that he was an Administrative Advocate. Respondent informed Complainant that he had a case and would go through the “EEO” process, and put a package together. Complainant, believing Respondent was a lawyer, stated that Respondent made no distinction between himself and that of a lawyer.
(Citations to record omitted). As the majority points out, Hodges testified that he did not believe that Banks was a lawyer, and the ALJ’s finding to the contrary is without record support. This leaves us with only the ALJ’s cryptic comment that, according to Hodges, Banks “made no distinction between himself and that of [sic] a lawyer.”
Frankly, I am at a loss to understand what this rather inscrutable phrase was supposed to mean.2 Perhaps the ALJ was trying to convey the idea that Banks did not tell Hodges that “I am not a lawyer.” According to Hodges, however, Banks “indicated] to me I did not necessarily need a lawyer,” thus clearly implying that Banks was not a member of that noble calling. Moreover, I know of no authority, and the ALJ cited none, requiring an individual who does the kind of work that lawyers also do to make a declaration of the kind the ALJ seems to have had *442in mind. Attorneys prepare tax returns, but this does not make it an unlawful or deceptive practice for an employee of H. & R. Block to fail to volunteer that he or she is not a member of the bar.
In Conclusion of Law No. 14, the ALJ concluded:
Petitioner has established by a preponderance of the evidence that Respondent’s use of the title “administrative advocate” and rendering of legal advice misrepresented that his services had a sponsorship, approval, certification, characteristic, and were of a particular standard, or quality when it did not in violation of D.C.Code, see. 28-3904(a), (b) and (d).
If this Conclusion was designed to be a factual finding, it did not disclose in what way Banks’ use of the title “administrative advocate” was deceptive, nor did it identify the “legal advice” which Banks allegedly provided. If the fourteenth legal conclusion added anything to the second finding of fact, it was not very much.
In other words, the ALJ has made almost no substantive findings at all.3 Even if there is evidence in the record supporting the relief granted by the agency — and that “if’ is not an inconsiderable one — the findings were, in my view, altogether inadequate, and effective judicial review has been foreclosed. Accordingly, I would remand the case to the agency with directions to issue findings of fact and conclusions of law which comport with the requirements of the District’s Administrative Procedure Act.4

. Consumer fraud is not amusing. As to this kind of simplistic braggadocio, however — "my dad can whip your dad" — I advert to the librettist's perhaps exaggerated counsel:
If you wish in the world to advance
Your merits you’re bound to enhance
You must stir it and stump it
And blow your own trumpet
Or, trust me, you haven't a chance.
William Gilbert & Arthur Sullivan, Ruddigore, Act I (1887).

. Exalting the ordinarily humdrum task of construction to a creative art form, the majority attributes to the agency a finding that Banks "misrepresented himself as the functional equivalent of a lawyer.” Later, the majority says that the agency found that Banks falsely represented himself to be "an advocate with skills equivalent to those of a lawyer.” The problem is that the ALJ never wrote these phrases or anything like them. Moreover, neither the ALJ nor the majority has explained what precisely it was that Banks said that would support such findings.

. In fact, as my colleagues point out, the ALJ did not even make an explicit finding that Hodges did not get his money back!

. Banks may very well be in contempt of this court's order in the unauthorized practice case, in which he was enjoined, inter alia, from using the term “advocate" in describing himself or his qualifications. See In re Banks, 561 A.2d 158, 168 (D.C.1987). If so, then perhaps proceedings should be instituted against Banks for contempt. In my view, however, the injunction is irrelevant to the present case. The CPPA means the same thing vis-a-vis all defendants, and the question whether Banks has violated it is not affected in any way by the existence of the injunction.