Court Opinion

ID: 9690063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:52:46.709132+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:53.403668
License: Public Domain

MARKELL, Bankruptcy Judge,
with whom HOLLOWELL, Bankruptcy Judge joins,
concurring in the result:
I concur in the result. I dissent, however, from the decision to hear this matter en banc.
*235This appeal is simple. Under Paccom Leasing Corp. v. Deico Elects., Inc. (In re Deico Elects., Inc.), 139 B.R. 945 (9th Cir. BAP 1992), the bankruptcy court had discretion as to when adequate protection payments were to begin. The bankruptcy court fairly exercised that discretion, and required adequate protection payments to begin after the date they were first requested. Although appellant asked, the bankruptcy court did not retroactively order any payments.
This set of facts call for us to affirm, as acknowledged by the lead opinion. I therefore concur with the majority in affirming the bankruptcy court’s decision.
I write more because the separate concurrence indicates that, notwithstanding its view that we should affirm the result, it wishes to “abandon” Deico. Given this position, I feel compelled to comment on the minimum conditions under which we should exercise our en banc power.
I start with the separate concurrence’s treatment of Deico. It is concerned that Deico could be, and has been, argued both for and against retroactive adequate protection, thus injecting inappropriate and costly uncertainty in the bankruptcy process. I find this concern odd given its stance that we should affirm. The bankruptcy court’s decision was not in the zone of discretion that the separate concurrence would condemn; the bankruptcy court did not order retroactive adequate protection. Indeed, neither the lead opinion nor the separate concurrence cites any reported case in which Deico has been used to justify such retroactive adequate protection. Notwithstanding this, the separate concurrence would have this en banc panel “abandon” a decision that has never been used to justify the type of result it would reverse.
Given this oddity, it makes no sense to me to sit en banc simply to rewrite a prior decision without facts or an order exemplifying the evil to be eradicated. See, e.g., Western Pac. R.R. Corp. v. Western Pac. R.R., 345 U.S. 247, 270, 73 S.Ct. 656, 97 L.Ed. 986 (1953) (“Hence, insofar as possible, determinations en banc are indicated whenever it seems likely that a majority of all the active judges would reach a different result than the panel assigned to hear a case or which has heard it.”) (Frankfurter, J., concurring) (emphasis supplied); Public Serv. Co. of New Mexico v. F.E.R.C., 863 F.2d 1021, 1023 (D.C.Cir. 1988) (“I do not think that this case is an appropriate one for the court to rehear en banc ... Thus, even were the court to rehear the case and to accept all of FERC’s arguments, the end result would remain unchanged. I do not conceive it to be a proper use of the court’s resources to convene en banc in such circumstances.”) (D.H. Ginsburg, J., concurring).
I am concerned that as a Panel we venture outside the proper realm of judicial review by indicating a willingness to rewrite our precedent without an unjust or untoward result to guide our drafting. Such an effort is the antithesis of the common law method. See Robert A. Sprecher, The Development of the Doctrine of Stare Decisis and the Extent to Which It Should Be Applied, 31 A.B.A.J. 501, 501-02 (1945). Without a change in result, our words, I fear, are little more than nice sounding dicta, and we unwittingly engage in treatise writing, not opinion drafting.
The separate concurrence justifies this exercise by describing Deico as “flawed,” and by then invoking the Ninth Circuit’s indication to this Panel that we should revisit a decision that “deserves reconsideration.” Separate Concurrence, at n.16 (citing Saddleback Community Church v. El Toro Materials Company, Inc. (In re El Toro Materials Company, Inc.), 504 *236F.3d 978, 981 n. 7 (2007)). Toward the end of this concurrence, it also invokes, as does the lead opinion, the Supreme Court’s decision in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 883, 854, 112 S.Ct. 2791, 120 L.Ed.2d 674 (1992), which states that courts may properly revisit earlier holdings for “prudential and pragmatic considerations .... ”
But both of these precedents seem inapt. El Toro was issued before we drafted our own en banc rule, which the Ninth Circuit approved, and which would presumably control here. Casey was drafted from the perspective of a court from which there is no appeal.18
Our position is quite different. Acknowledging that our decisions may be appealed as of right to the Ninth Circuit, and that any en banc hearing delays the ultimate resolution of the case, our en banc rule states a limited role for en banc hearings. Rule 8012-2(a) states that:
An en banc hearing or decision of an appeal is not favored and ordinarily will not be ordered unless it appears that it is necessary to secure or maintain uniformity of the Panel’s decisions including, without limitation, when there is a challenge to an existing precedent of the Panel.
Hearing this case en banc is not necessary “to secure or maintain uniformity;” no contrary case has been identified. Nor has there been any substantial challenge to this Panel’s precedent in the eighteen years since we decided Deico. The separate concurrence labels Deico “so problematic in its application that it should be abandoned.” But it offers no convincing argument as to why its application requires us to rewrite it without first being presented with facts that require reversal.19
Justice Stevens once paraphrased the Latin maxim at issue here today — stare decisis et non quieta movere — as a “doctrine that teaches judges that it is often wise to let sleeping dogs lie.” John Paul Stevens, The Life Span of a Judge-Made Rule, 58 N.Y.U. L.Rev. 1, 1 (1983). We should not disturb Deico’s somnolent status. I would simply affirm, and I concur to that extent.

. Indeed, Casey itself listed the circumstances under which the Court might reconsider a prior ruling. Under Casey,
"when this Court reexamines a prior holding, its judgment is customarily informed by a series of prudential and pragmatic considerations designed to test the consistency of overruling a prior decision with the ideal of the rule of law, and to gauge the respective costs of reaffirming and overruling a prior case. Thus, for example, we may ask whether the rule has proven to be intolerable simply in defying practical workability,....; whether the rule is subject to a kind of reliance that would lend a special hardship to the consequences of overruling and add inequity to the cost of repudiation; .... whether related principles of law have so far developed as to have left the old rule no more than a remnant of abandoned doctrine,....; or whether facts have so changed, or come to be seen so differently, as to have robbed the old rule of significant application or justification....”
Casey, 505 U.S. at 854-55, 112 S.Ct. 2791. Today's opinions do not undertake this analysis to any substantial degree.

. Selecting this case for en banc review raises a more fundamental issue. If we signal a willingness to review an imperfect precedent to the extent it is problematic, our precedents, whatever they may be, becomes less certain and no better than semi-absolute. And as it has been stated, a “semi-absolute precedent has no more virtue than a semi-fresh egg.” Alfred L. Goodhart, Precedents in the Court of Appeal, 9 Cambridge L.J. 349, 357 (1947).