Court Opinion

ID: 9458921
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:05:18.449124+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:56.385008
License: Public Domain

TIMBERS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
In this environmental suit involving alleged pollution of the waters of Lake *1042Champlain, the late Chief Judge Leddy of the District Court for the District of Vermont, reached his class action determination “with great reluctance”. 53 F.R.D. 430, 433. In affirming the district court by a 2-1 vote, Judge Smith’s forthright panel majority opinion acknowledged that “[w]e are confronted with the novel question whether a diversity case will be allowed to proceed as a class action under Fed.R.Civ.P. 23(b) (3) when the named plaintiffs meet the jurisdictional amount requirement of 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a) but the unnamed representatives of the class do not.” 469 F.2d at 1033.
I have already expressed in my panel dissent, 469 F.2d at 1036, my views on this novel issue, the resolution of which will vitally affect the viability of the Rule 23(b)(3) class action. The record in this case strikes me as a particularly good one on which to resolve this important issue. The facts are not in dispute. The legal question is starkly presented. The issue to be resolved is both important and sure to recur.
Finally, I think it is most unfortunate that en banc reconsideration of such a substantial question of unusual importance is being denied despite the 4-3 vote by the active judges of this Court in favor of en banc reconsideration. This comes about because there has been a vacancy on this nine judge Court for nearly a year and one of the eight active judges has abstained from voting in this case by reason of disqualification. Fed.R.App.P. 35(a) authorizes a rehearing en bane only when ordered by a “majority of the circuit judges who are in regular active service”. With only eight active judges, when one judge by reason of disqualification is excluded from voting whether to en banc but is included in determining what constitutes a majority, then the rule appears to require five out of seven to en banc the case. Such a result seems to me to be most unfortunate in thwarting the clear intent of the rule. It is especially unfortunate here where the rule operates to permit a minority of the active judges of the Court to deny en banc reconsideration of one of the more pressing issues of our day — an issue to which the best thinking of legal scholars, lawyers and judges has been devoted.
I therefore respectfully but most emphatically dissent from the denial of reconsideration en banc.
I am authorized to state that Judge OAKES concurs in this dissenting opinion.1

. We note that our colleagues, Judges Kaufman and Mansfield, have chosen to file opinions dissenting from our dissent.
We claim no omniscience as to how our colleagues, Senior Judges Moore and Smith, would vote on the merits in the event of a rehearing en banc in this case. That of course is not the issue to which our dissent is addressed. The issue is whether a three-judge minority — on a Court for which Congress has provided a nine-judge complement, 28 U.S.C. § 44(a) (1970) — may block the reconsideration en banc which the majority wants of a substantial question of unusual importance. And as we all know, despite the guesswork of our colleagues as to how our Senior colleagues would vote if they could vote on whether to en banc, the fact is that not infrequently the author of the majority opinion of a divided panel has voted in favor of en bane reconsideration. See, e. g., Scenic Hudson II, 453 F.2d 463, 494 (2 Cir. 1971), cert, denied, 407 U.S. 926 (1972), and other en banc cases. And there are times when judges change their minds on the merits of an issue. See, e. g., Waterman, J., concurring in Local 1251, UAW v. Robertshaw Controls Co., 405 F.2d 29, 33 (2 Cir. 1968) (en banc), overruling Zdanok v. Glidden Co., 288 F.2d 99 (2 Cir. 1961).
To the extent that Judges Kaufman and Mansfield believe that “[t]he time may well have come for a Congressional review” of that part of 28 U.S.C. § 46 (e) (1970) that governs en banc procedure, we agree. Such review, in addition to considering the present anomaly by which a minority can thwart the will of a majority of the Court in determining whether en banc reconsideration is to be granted, might also appropriately address itself to the question whether, in en banc matters, all Senior judges who have elected to continue their judicial service pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 294 (1970) should be fully enfranchised. Surely any Senior judge who sat on the original panel should be permitted to vote oi& whether to en banc the ease (as he now is permitted to vote on the merits if the case is en banced).