Court Opinion

ID: 9453480
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:14:45.145614+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:40.602690
License: Public Domain

DAVIS, Judge
(dissenting):
I see the record quite differently. The vital findings of the ASBCA seem to me well supported by substantial evidence on the record as a whole. I select for discussion two dispositive Board conclusions of fact which the court overturns — improperly, in my view. One is the finding that Rossi, the technical adviser or specialist, never gave an order to the plaintiff to trim the “step”. The Board declared, and the court does not disagree, that if such an order was given it must have been on Rossi’s visit to the plant on October 21, 1963. The Board then goes on to find that no such order was given. This was, in large part, an issue of conflicting testimony. The company’s witnesses said that they had been so instructed. Rossi denied this on the stand, saying unequivocally (both on direct and on cross-examination) that he never instructed the contractor to remove the “step” in the sewing room and never told them they would be entitled to additional payment. The Board obviously thought this testimony more credible, for one reason, because “at the time of that visit appellant [plaintiff] had been, performing this operation on its own initiative for about three weeks and had continued to do so, although the Quality Control Representative [Mr. Cozzi] who visited its plant on 8 October 1963, had objected thereto; indeed appellant telephoned the contracting officer at that time to obtain his permission to continue this additional operation.” The reports made after Mr. Rossi’s visit can be read (as the court does) as suggesting, on the other hand, that an order was in fact given, but this reading is disputable and, in any event, it is the Board’s function not the court’s — especially where there is conflicting testimony — to evaluate all the factors tending one way or the other. It is a rare case indeed that we could upset an administrative finding based on explicit oral testimony such as Rossi’s. “Substantial evidence is ‘enough to justify, if the trial were to a jury, a refusal to direct a verdict when the conclusion sought to be drawn from it is one of fact for the jury.’ National Labor Relations Board v. Columbian Enameling & Stamping Co., 306 U.S. 292, 300, 59 S.Ct. 501, 83 L.Ed. 660 (1939).” Illinois Central R. R. v. Norfolk & Western Ry., 385 U.S. 57, 66, 87 S.Ct. 255, 260, 17 L.Ed.2d 162 (1966).
*240The other dispositive finding relates to faults in plaintiff’s manufacturing and testing processes which, the Board found, were more probably the cause of the failure of its second lot to pass the hydrostatic tests. The Board noted that (i) Mr. Cozzi, the Government’s quality control representative, observed a failure by the contractor’s workers to distribute the sleeve fullness properly so that the armhole became puckered and twisted; (ii) Mr. Rossi’s testimony and written report noted that some of the differences as to test results may have stemmed from the fact that plaintiff tested uncompleted coats and that the sealant may not have had proper consistency; and (iii) most significantly, the second lot failed the defendant’s tests not only because of leakage at the armhole seam but also at the side seam. Since no “step” was involved in the side seam, the Board thought that it could only attribute the leak at that point “to insufficient sealing either in material quality or in the care with which the sealant was applied.” The Board added that even after the company “engaged in the described trimming operation, it was still possible to have leakage from unskillful or inadequate application of sealant to the armhole seam, as appellant proved by the failure of the hydrostatic tests of lot 17 under Contract No. 2787.”
The court gives three main grounds for rejecting the Board’s findings: The many coats with the “step” trimmed off passed the tests (except for the one lot) while the earlier coats bearing the surplus material failed; the leakage occurred at the top half of the armhole (where the “step” is located), not the bottom half; and statements in the reports of Government representatives to the effect that the trimming operation was “necessary.”1 These are certainly reasons which could persuade a fact-finder, but they are not conclusive. After all, one later lot (No. 17) did fail even after the trimming off of the “step”, and the side-seam leaked even though no “step” was involved. The Board could find that these failures were caused by faulty workmanship (including insufficient sealing) and that this same neglect, rather than the “step”, caused the leakage on the early tests.2 The plaintiff’s care would probably be greater after it experienced its troubles, and after the rejection of the second lot, and that is why, the Board could decide, the contractor’s experience was better with the later inspections. The improved results after the removal of the “step” could, indeed, have been coincidental to that operation; post hoc is not always propter hoc. Reasonable inferences of this type are for the administrative tribunal, not for us, to evaluate and make. Federal Trade Comm’n v. Pacific States Paper Trade Ass’n, 273 U.S. 52, 63, 47 S.Ct. 255, 71 L.Ed. 534 (1927); Illinois Central R. R. v. Norfolk & Western Ry., supra. The “possibility of drawing two inconsistent conclusions from the evidence does not prevent an administrative agency’s finding from being supported by substantial evidence.” Consolo v. Federal Maritime Comm’n, 383 U.S. 607, 620, 86 S.Ct. 1018, 1026, 16 L.Ed.2d 131 (1966). In particular, it is not the rule that a board finding can stand only if the court agrees with it or cannot easily make up its mind, or where the evidence is very closely bal*241anced. Just as with jury verdicts, board findings which affirmatively appear to us to be incorrect or questionable are often sustained by “substantial evidence” on the record as a whole, and must therefore be left undisturbed.
In this connection it is important to note that the evidence as to trade practice shows, not that four coats was always the rigid upper limit, but that four or five would be usual, and sometimes six. The Board criticized the contractor for jumping (in multiples of four) from four to eight to twelve coats, saying that perhaps only one or two additional coats would have been sufficient. The court, in turn, criticizes the Board because “some coats required as many as twelve coats of sealant” and “it is impossible to determine visually which of the raincoats needed only a few additional coats and which needed twelve coats of sealant” (emphasis added). What the court overlooks is that the Board could reasonably find that in the relatively few instances in which twelve coats were needed (before the item passed the early tests) the extra coats, above 5 or 6, could have been due to plaintiff’s fault in mixing or applying the sealant, not to the existence of the “step”. If the contractor’s neglect caused that many applications of sealant to be needed in some cases, the defendant cannot be held responsible for plaintiff’s decision to increase the sealant-coats in multiples of four for all the garments.
The sum of it is that, if this were a jury trial, I could not set aside a verdict for the Government on this record. The same test applies here, as the Supreme Court has reiterated. I must therefore accept the Board’s two dispositive findings that no order was given to plaintiff and that its difficulties were caused by its own insufficiencies. Either of these findings is enough to conclude the case against plaintiff.
I add that I agree with the court as to the rule for defective Government-supplied specifications, but think that the Board applied the same rule in substance, though it used different words. I agree also with the court (and disagree with the Board) that the contract called upen the contractor to apply only the number of coats of sealant required by the standard trade practice. However, this legal error of the Board in interpreting the agreement was immaterial to its dispositive factual findings which I believe we must accept.
NICHOLS, Judge, joins in the foregoing dissenting opinion.

. In his oral testimony, Rossi testified that the trimming operation may have been necessary to this particular contractor, because of the way it operated, but would not be necessary for others doing the same type of work if they applied the sealant properly. Rossi emphasized that plaintiff was making the top armhole seam too wide, and that this caused the “step”; in his opinion the “step” was a necessary result of the contractor’s less-than-adequate manufacturing methods.

. The plurality says, in a footnote, that many of the minor defects in plaintiff’s workmanship were corrected and still the sealing difficulties continued unabated. The Board did not make any such finding that the defects to which it referred were corrected before the second batch of garments was rejected, and the record does not compel that conclusion, and may not even permit it.