Court Opinion

ID: 9454701
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:55:18.984971+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:15.289618
License: Public Domain

NICHOLS, Judge
(concurring):
This case confronts us, I think, with issues we should be prepared to face, if we cannot resolve.
The stipulation is certainly unacceptable. To me it suffices that it is contradictory in its terms, proposing at once to suppress the commissioner’s report, and to use it to instruct the Atomic Energy Commission how to determine the equitable adjustment plaintiff is entitled to receive. We are supposed to act on the stipulation, uninformed as to why defendant finds the said report unacceptable, while it is simultaneously willing that the case should proceed to resolution according to its terms. Clearly it proposes we should decide with blindfolds on, something I deem it rash to do.
I recognize that defendant's main interest in our decisions is often, indeed, *1281usually, in the pronouncements we make in our opinions, rather than the pecuniary outcome. Plaintiffs, usually, if they get their money, care little what we say. Therefore, the practice indicated in the proposed stipulation if regularized by us, would lend itself to a manipulation of the published decisional material, to favor the views and concepts the defendant’s able Department of Justice desires to have adopted as the views and concepts of courts.
On the other hand, plaintiffs justly entitled to recover have to wait long enough for their money as it is (with no interest running in most classes of cases) without having to wait a further interval so that defendant can litigate mere semantics perhaps, after it has concluded that it has an obligation to pay. If our rejection of this proposed stipulation or any other has the effect of prolonging litigation long after the amount due and owing, or the principles for establishing it, are settled, I think it has an effect we will live to regret.
Our practice of adopting our commissioners’ recommended opinions per curi-am under their names, puts them in the position of competing for space in our reports, and it is certainly unfair to bar such an opinion from access to this space because it is too successful, no party being willing to question it longer. On the other hand, it may be unfair to the judges if they are expected to adopt lengthy dissertations as their own, on the sole basis that no one has objected to them. There are many reasons why a party may give up a case, besides disbelief in its merits. Hitherto this has mostly been true of plaintiffs, but if what one hears of current budgetary limitations are true, defendant also may be surrendering after initial setbacks, for no other reason but lack of funds to continue.
I think there are ample reasons to reject the stipulation proposed to us here, but beyond that, I wish to keep my options open. The problem requires further study, and an established practice fair to all the interests involved.