Court Opinion

ID: 9460048
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:38:56.168845+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:26.848860
License: Public Domain

TIMBERS, Circuit Judge,
votes to grant the petition for rehearing.
ON PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC
A petition for a rehearing containing a suggestion that the action be reheard en banc having been filed herein by counsel for appellee Jacqueline Onassis, and a poll of the judges in regular active service having been taken on the request of such a judge, and Chief Judge Kaufman, Circuit Judges Friendly, Hays, Feinberg, Mansfield and Mulligan having voted to deny the petition, and Circuit Judges Oakes and Timbers having voted to grant the petition, and a per curiam opinion and an opinion by Circuit Judge Timbers having been filed,
Upon consideration thereof, it is Ordered that said petition be and it hereby is denied.
PER CURIAM:
Our brothers Oakes and Timbers have, as they characterize it, dissented “once again”1 from this Court’s denial of en banc reconsideration of a panel decision. In their dissenting opinion, they have recognized that en banc review is not appropriate simply to resolve a mere disagreement with the outcome reached by a panel of this Court. Our dissenting brothers note, however, that they find in this ease not merely an erroneous decision but a substantial question of unusual importance. Wholly aside from our view whether it was proper for the panel to modify the district court’s decree, we cannot agree with their assessment of the importance of the question before us.
Although we sympathize with the plight of Mrs. Onassis, it hardly need be stated that the importance of a decision does not turn on whether the litigants stand in the limelight of public recognition or in, the shadows of anonymity. Rather, significance rests on the prece-dential impact that a determination of this Court is likely to have on the future course of the law and hence on the lives of countless others.
When examined from this perspective, it is quite clear that the panel’s decision does not rise to the threshold of importance requisite to en banc reconsideration. To be sure the issue of what constitutes the appropriate standard for appellate review of the terms of an in-junctive decree is indeed important. And, if the panel had recast the traditional yardstick into a test other than abuse of the wide discretion accorded the district court in formulating its decree, International Salt Co. v. United States, 332 U.S. 392, 400-401, 68 S.Ct. 12, 92 L. Ed. 20 (1947); United States v. National Lead Co., 332 U.S. 319, 335, 67 *1005S.Ct. 1634, 91 L.Ed. 2077 (1947), then we too would have responded affirmatively to a request for. en banc review. But it did not do this. Although several members of the Court may dislike the result, the principle embodied in the majority’s opinion is not a departure from the established rule. Since we foresee minimal precedential impact for this decision, and because we are properly concerned that the sparse judicial resources of this Court should not be expended unnecessarily — particularly where the question is not of unusual importance — reconsideration of the question en banc would be wholly unwarranted.

. The three cases cited by our dissenting brothers as illustrative of our failure to “be more gingerly about declining to act as a full court in ruling upon substantial questions of unusual importance,” Eisen v. Carlisle & Jacquelin, 479 F.2d 1005, 1020-1026 (2 Cir. 1973), cert, granted, 414 U.S. 908, 94 S.Ct. 235, 38 L.Ed.2d 146 (1973) ; Boraas v. Village of Belle Terre, 476 F.2d 806, 824-827 (2 Cir. 1973), prob. juris, noted, 414 U.S. 907, 94 S. Ctr'234, 38 L.Ed.2d 145 (1973) ; Zahn v. International Paper Co., 469 F.2d 1033, 1040-1042 (2 Cir. 1972), eert. granted, 410 U.S. 925, 93 S.Ct. 1370, 35 L.Ed.2d 585 (1973), indeed only prove the wisdom of our careful selectivity. At a time of burgeoning calendars, we do well at least to recognize those cases which should not tarry in this Court many months during en banc proceedings when resolution by the Supreme Court is inevitable. Surely our insight was confirmed when the highest court agreed to review our panel decisions in the cited cases.