Court Opinion

ID: 9453490
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:15:05.959618+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:39.250951
License: Public Domain

GODBOLD, Circuit Judge
(concurring in part and dissenting in part).
I have to dissent from that part of the opinion that relates to partial summary judgment.
My brother judges create in summary judgment practice the same trap for the unwary pleader that existed at common law for the party who joined issue on an immaterial plea and then lost his case on the false issue thereby created although the issue was erroneously in the case.
Mr. Piper can now understand how it was that Mr. Barney was not able to recover for his mule that was worth less than $50.1 But how this approach gets incorporated into Rule 56 is somewhat harder to understand. It can safely be said that it is not the sort of thing the rule makers had in mind. “Summary judgment procedure is not a catch penny contrivance to take unwary litigants into its toils and deprive them of a trial.” Hutcheson, J. in Whitaker v. Coleman, 115 F.2d 305, 307 (5th Cir. 1940). Judge Goldberg has expressed a parallel philosophy in atomic age language. “Summary judgment is a lethal weapon and courts must be mindful of its aims and targets and beware of overkill in its use.” Brunswick Corporation v. Vineburg, 370 F.2d 605 (5th Cir. 1967).
Let us see how Piper lost not a mule worth less than $50 but a judgment for $89,672.59 plus penalties and interest. The government moved for partial summary judgment for excise taxes for the fourth quarter of 1959 on the sole and specific ground that the defendant was estopped from asserting any defense with regard to this quarter by virtue of a prior criminal conviction of failure to file excise tax returns for the quarter.2 Ex*466hibit A thereto was the affidavit of a Director of Internal Revenue setting out that an assessment had been made for excise taxes for the fourth quarter of 1959, plus penalties, and giving appropriate dates, amounts and like data.3 Appellant’s counsel filed a written “opposition” to the motion directed principally to the government’s collateral estoppel theory and attaching a memorandum brief. The document was not sworn to, which is hardly surprising since the issue was one of law. But, in what now proves to be a catastrophic error, counsel included in the unsworn oposition one paragraph in which he disputed the correctness of the amount of the liability for the quarter in question, saying he did not import all the automobiles on which the calculation was based and owed taxes only on those which he did import.4
The court adopted the government’s theory and granted partial summary judgment on the ground the criminal conviction conclusively established the debt and that collateral estoppel operated to bar the defendant from asserting any defense to the allegations concerning the assessment.5
Before this court the government acknowledges. that both it and the trial court were in error in application of collateral estoppel insofar as the amount of tax and penalty are concerned. With this belated confession of error my brother judges agree.
Before rendering summary judgment the district court must determine that there is no genuine issue of material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law, Fed.R.Civ.P. 56(c). The district court determined that as a matter of law the government was entitled to a judgment and that the amount thereof also was established as a matter of law. The court did not establish, as a factual matter, issues of material facts. It never reached questions of fact as such, but conclusively ascertained the facts by a *467threshold determination of law. Based on its erroneous conclusion of law the trial judge barred the appellant from asserting “any defense with regard to the allegations in this cause concerning the assessment.” The appellant is now faulted for not interposing sworn factual defenses when the trial court said no defenses would be countenanced.
The government’s error, compounded by the trial court, is rewarded in this court by leaving the appellant flopping where he was shot — on the ground.
I suspect that what is sauce for Piper’s goose would not be sauce for the government’s gander. If in this same case there had been cross-motions for summary judgment, the appellant’s opposition had been sworn, but the notary had failed to sign the affidavit of the Director of Internal Revenue, I doubt this court would have reversed and rendered with direction to enter partial summary judgment for appellant.
“[I]f the appellate court becomes convinced that the appellant, although acting in good faith, has somehow or other failed to raise at the trial level a genuine factual issue that is, nevertheless, present in the case it should make such a disposition of the appeal as will permit him to do so.” 6 Moore, Federal Practice ¶ 56.27 [1], at 2975 (2d ed. 1966); see also Kennedy v. Silas Mason Co., 334 U.S. 249, 256, 68 S.Ct. 1031, 92 L.Ed. 1347 (1948); Houghton Mifflin Co. v. Stackpole Sons, Inc., 113 F.2d 627 (2d Cir. 1940).
“Technical rulings have no place in this [summary judgment] procedure.” Judge Hutcheson in Whitaker v. Coleman, supra.
The majority’s second point is that the criminal conviction did estop the appellant from showing he was not an importer of automobiles, since that was a fact necessary to his conviction. With that I do not disagree, but it is wholly irrelevant. The appellant did not deny being an importer; he insisted only that he had been assessed for some cars that he had not imported, while acknowledging that he owed tax on others that he had imported. See footnote 4, supra,
The result of this case is neither laud-ab>le for the sovereign, which albeit unintentionally did lead the trial court into error, nor in keeping with either language or purpose of the federal rules,

. Sharpe et al. v. Barney, 114 Ala. 361, 21 So. 490 (1897), and see eases there cited. Barney sued for conversion of a mule. Defendant pleaded (1) the general issue and (2) that the mule was worth less than $50. The second plea was immaterial to Barney’s cause of action and right to recover. But, unwary, he did not test the sufficiency of the plea by demurrer and instead joined issue on it. The trial court declined to charge that if the jury believed the mule was worth less than $50 they should find for defendant. The Alabama Supreme Court reversed, noting that the plea was bad but since Barney had joined issue upon it the defendant was entitled to a verdict if the evidence did show the mule wasn’t a $50 mule.
Some common law pleaders engaged intentionally in this tidy little device for entrapping the somnolent adversary. More often the pleader, with the best of intentions, had drafted a plea that he thought material and sufficient at the time, but later found himself the surprised beneficiary of bounty from heaven, the winner by the jury’s being required to find in his favor on an immaterial issue accidentally made up between the parties.

. The motion reads: “Comes now the United States of America, plaintiff herein, by and through its attorney Melvin M. Diggs, United States Attorney for the Northern District of Texas, and moves this Court to enter partial summary judg*466ment with respect to the excise tax assessment, penalties and accrued interest due and owing for the fourth quarter of 1959 in accordance with the provisions of Rule 56(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure on the grounds that the defendant, E. M. Piper, is estopped from asserting any defense with regard to said quarter by virtue of his conviction of violations of Section 7201 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, to wit: failure to file excise tax return and failure to pay excise taxes due in the amount of $89,-672.59 for the fourth quarter of 1959. Exhibit A is attached hereto.”

. One day before the motion for summary judgment was ruled on the parties filed a pre-trial stipulation that the assessment (along with other assessments) had been made, and attached thereto voluminous extracts from appellant’s books and records. The court did not reach consideration of the documents, since it ruled on the pleadings that as a matter of law appellant’s liability for the quarter in question, and the amount thereof, were fixed by the criminal conviction.

. The full text of this paragraph was: “The Defendant disputes the correctness of the amount of excise tax liability, penalties and interest asserted to be due for the fourth quarter of 1959 (and all other quarters) on the ground that Defendant was not the importer of a substantial number of the automobiles which were imported and sold and which formed the basis for the excise tax assessment made. The Defendant is liable for excise taxes under Section 4061(a) only with respect to automobiles that he imported into his country for sale.”

. In pertinent part the court’s order said: “the Court having examined the pleading and heard the argument of counsel and being of the opinion that the Judgment of Conviction * * * conclusively establishes that the defendant, E. M. Piper, is an importer and is indebted to the United States of America in the amount of $89,672.59 plus penalties and interest as provided by law for excise taxes accruing during the 4th quarter of 1959, and the Court being of the further opinion that said criminal conviction collaterally estops the defendant, E. M. Piper, from asserting any defense with regard to the allegations in this cause concerning the assessment of excise taxes for the 4th quarter 1959, and the Court being of the further opinion that plaintiff’s Motion For Partial Summary Judgment should in all things be granted, it is therefore * * (Emphasis added.)