Court Opinion

ID: 9487346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 12:14:20.288074+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:51:12.479118
License: Public Domain

KOZINSKI, Circuit Judge,
dissenting:
“[A]nyone entering into an arrangement with the Government takes the risk of having accurately ascertained that he who purports to act for the Government stays -within the bounds of his authority.” So the Supreme Court told us half a century ago in Federal Crop Ins. Corp. v. Merrill, 332 U.S. 380, 384, 68 S.Ct. 1, 3, 92 L.Ed. 10 (1947). In an opinion likely to have extremely serious and far-reaching consequences, the majority today cuts the core out of- Merrill and lays waste the principle that the government is bound by its agents only if they act within the scope of their authority.
The heart of my disagreement with the majority lies in its astounding conclusion that every Assistant U.S. Attorney in the country — and by inference every other government official as well — has implicit authority to bind the government in a large variety of matters beyond the scope of his express authority. I emphatically disagree with the notion that such a corona of implied authority surrounds every grant of power by the government to its agents. This is so radical, so sweeping a departure from existing law, its full effect is difficult to fathom. One need only consider the vacuum of authority supporting the majority’s ruling, the vague and unmanageable scope of the doctrine it announces and the ad hoc manner in which it reaches its ultimate conclusion to realize that something very dangerous is going on here.
*1344A. Having “found no express grant of authority to United States Attorneys to bind the ‘government’ not to oppose motions for relief from deportation to the INS,” the majority relies on “ordinary principles of agency law” to conclude that U.S. Attorneys have implied authority to do so. Maj. op. at 1340. But there is no precedent for applying ordinary, common law agency principles to define the relationship between the federal government and its agents. To the contrary: If common law principles applied to the government, we might resolve this case quite readily — the AUSA no doubt had apparent authority to bind the government in immigration matters. Merrill firmly rejected this notion, and with it the idea that common law agency principles have anything to say about the scope of a government agent’s authority: “[T]he rules of law whereby private insurance companies are rendered liable for the acts of their agents are not bodily applicable to a Government agency ... unless Congress has so provided.” Merrill, 332 U.S. at 383 n. 1, 68 S.Ct. at 3 n. 1.
I, for one, find it instructive — nay, daunting — that no Supreme Court case utters so much as a whisper about the doctrine of implied authority that is the centerpiece of the majority’s analysis. Nor do any of the regional circuits recognize such a doctrine. When coupled with the Supreme Court’s oft-repeated pronouncement that “[m]en must turn square corners when they deal with the Government,” Rock Island, Ark. & La. R.R. v. United States, 254 U.S. 141, 143, 41 S.Ct. 55, 56, 65 L.Ed. 188 (1920), this silence speaks very loud indeed.
I do not denigrate the authority of the Federal Circuit, which forged the majority’s purported anchor, H. Landau & Co. v. United States, 886 F.2d 322 (Fed.Cir.1989). Indeed, the Federal Circuit is one of the most vigilant enforcers of the principle announced in Merrill.1 See, e.g., New America Shipbuilders, Inc. v. United States, 871 F.2d 1077, 1080 (Fed.Cir.1989) (“Where an approving official exceeds his authority, the government can disavow the official’s words and is not bound by an implied contract.”); H.F. Allen Orchards v. United States, 749 F.2d 1571, 1575 (Fed.Cir.1984) (plaintiff in a contract action with the government must show “that the officer whose conduct [plaintiff] relied upon had actual authority to bind the government in contract”). But Federal Circuit cases arise in a unique context and must be read with caution. Landau was a commercial case and the question presented was whether a designation of federal officials to perform certain duties under the terms of a federal procurement contract carried with it the incidental authority to perform other, closely related, duties under the same contract. The Federal Circuit held that the contract might confer such an implicit grant of authority and remanded for findings on that point. Landau, 886 F.2d at 324.
I have no quarrel with Landau, so far as it goes. Contract administration is a complex and somewhat arcane process, particularly when it involves the federal government; what authority might lurk within the often convoluted terms of federal contracts can be difficult to determine. What is significant in Landau, however, is that someone within the agency had the express authority to bind the government; the only question was whether that official had delegated the authority to a subordinate. It’s a universe apart to say, as the majority does, that a statutory grant of .authority from Congress carries with it the implicit power to bind the United States in matters that fall outside the scope of the statute.
To begin to appreciate the difference, one need only note that in Landau the Federal Circuit remanded for factual development by the trial court, something that makes perfect sense when trying to assess an individualized delegation of power from a superior to a subordinate in the context of a quasi-com-*1345mereial transaction. In our case, the majority divines the scope of the U.S. Attorney’s implicit authority on its own, as it pretty much has to. After all, it’s not possible to remand to the BIA for findings of fact as to whether the members of the 89th Congress (who last amended 28 U.S.C. § 547, in 1966) implicitly meant to authorize U.S. Attorneys to meddle in deportation proceedings.
The other cases the majority cites have nothing at all to do with the rationale for its decision. For instance, United States v. Harvey, 791 F.2d 294 (4th Cir.1986), holds only that one U.S. Attorney’s office may, when acting within its authority, bind another. This is surprising only to those who view the various divisions within the federal government as akin to sibling corporations, in which case it makes sense to ask whether one sibling can bind another. But, when it comes to the federal government, the only relevant question is whether the agent purporting to bind the government is acting within his authority. If he is, all of the government’s other agents are bound, wherever they may reside within the government’s organizational chart. The matter at issue in Harvey was the enforceability of a plea agreement promising that the government would not prosecute a criminal defendant. Id. at 296. The AUSA in that case, clearly had authority to bind the government (including the prosecutors working in another U.S. Attorney’s office) not to prosecute. How does this support the majority’s theory of implied authority?
B. Even were one to accept the proposition that certain statutory grants of authority carry with them some implied additional powers, one would have to construe this doctrine very narrowly indeed, lest it swallow up the rule that government agents may only bind the government to the extent they are actually authorized.2 Instructive in this regard is the way the doctrine of implied authority has been applied within the Federal Circuit after Landau.3 Even in the highly specialized context where it was originally developed, the doctrine of implied authority has been applied cautiously and narrowly. See, e.g., California Sand & Gravel, Inc. v. United States, 22 Cl.Ct. 19, 27-28 (1990) (Tidwell, J.) (refusing to find implied authority and stating “[t]he court may not substitute itself unconditionally for the executive in granting authority to an unauthorized person”), aff'd, 937 F.2d 624 (Fed.Cir.1991); Eliel v. United States, 18 Cl.Ct. 461, 467-69 (1989) (refusing to find implied authority and noting that the court can only imply authority “under narrow circumstances”), aff'd, 909 F.2d 1495 (Fed.Cir.1990). The Claims Court has stressed that “Landau and the theory of implied actual authority is of limited application, and was not intended to repeal the long established rule that, when dealing with the government, only government agents with actual authority can make a contract, express or implied.” California Sand & Gravel, 22 Cl.Ct. at 27. The Claims Court has only twice found that government agents had the implied authority to bind the government.4 See Miller Elevator Co. v. United States, 30 Fed.Cl. 662 (1994) (Yock, J.); Zoubi v. Unit*1346ed States, 25 Cl.Ct. 581 (1992). And these two eases fit within a very narrow reading of Landau. The court in Zoubi found only that a Customs Service official authorized to hire interpreters also had the authority to set their salary. Zoubi 25 Cl.Ct. at 587. The court in Miller found that a contracting officer had delegated to a subordinate the power to approve modifications of an elevator maintenance contract. Miller, 30 Fed.Cl. at 693-95.
The Claims Court (now the Court of Federal Claims) has applied the Landau analysis only once outside the context of these quasi-commercial cases. In Howard v. United States, 31 Fed.Cl. 297 (1994), the Claims Court dismissed the claims of two informants who were seeking to enforce a contract for compensation they had made with mid-level officials in the Customs Service. The court considered the actual authority granted customs officers, found that their actual authority might, under Landau, logically extend to providing compensation to informants, but nevertheless concluded that the authority to investigate does not imply the authority to enter binding contracts to compensate informants. Id. at 314.
Contrast this with the majority’s intrepid approach. Applying the doctrine of implied authority for the first time outside the Federal Circuit, my colleagues have no trouble concluding that all AUSAs in the country have the implied authority to bind the United States in immigration matters. AUSAs now have this authority, the majority says, because: (1) “deportation commonly arises from the context of criminal prosecutions;” (2) “the terms of a plea or cooperation agreement will commonly affect deportation;” and (3) the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the INS are within the same department, and U.S. Attorneys are “very high officials,” so “there is no reason why ... we should doubt that Congress implied this grant of authority.” Maj. op. at 1340-41. The majority comes up with this short list of reasons without any citation of authority, without taking into account any contrary factors, without legal analysis at all. Given the constellation of possible inquiries one might profitably pursue in puzzling out the question of implied authority,5 the majority’s list of three factors, all neatly stacked to point in a single direction, conjures up the image of a result furiously seeking its rationale.
Especially troubling is the vagueness of the majority’s analysis. The government and those who deal with it need to know when the government will be bound by the acts of its agents; they shouldn’t have to speculate whether two judges of the court of appeals will find some reason to doubt that the government should be bound by a particular official’s promise. The majority limits its ruling to those delegations of authority made *1347to “very high officials” like the U.S. Attorney, maj. op. at 1341, but that condition does not make the majority’s standard any more concrete. The cooperation agreement here was signed not by the U.S. Attorney personally, but by an AUSA, as is normally the case. See ER exh. 5, at 62. To be sure, the AUSA got his authority from the U.S. Attorney, but Congress always grants authority to the Attorney General, the Secretary of Commerce or some other high-level official, who in turn delegates it to a subordinate. Thus, the “very high officials” component of the majority’s third prong adds little, if anything, to the majority’s analysis; it either cuts against the majority’s conclusion (because the cooperation agreement was not in fact signed by such a high level official), or is irrelevant (because it’s always true).6
One need only ponder a few hypotheticals and try to predict how they would come out under the majority’s analysis to appreciate how malleable that analysis is. Consider whether the U.S. Attorney’s power to prosecute cases and to enter plea bargains entitles him to bind the DEA not to revoke a physician’s license to sell prescription drugs if the physician pleads guilty to unlawfully distributing heroin, see United States v. Fitzhugh, 801 F.2d 1432, 1434 (D.C.Cir.1986); bind the Bureau of Prisons to release a prisoner on his earliest possible parole date in exchange for cooperation in the prosecution of a code-fendant, see Roe v. United States Attorney, 618 F.2d 980, 982 (2d Cir.1980); or bind the U.S. Marshal’s Service, in its administration of the Witness Protection Program, to provide twenty-four hour surveillance of a criminal defendant’s home in exchange for his agreement to testify against a eodefendant, see Doe v. Civiletti, 635 F.2d 88 (2d Cir.1980).
Conversely, could other government agencies bind the government, and thus the U.S. Attorney, not to bring certain criminal prosecutions? For instance, National Park Rangers are authorized to enforce federal law in national parks and recreation areas. Incident to this authority, could Park Rangers promise a drug dealer immunity from prosecution in exchange for information about poaching in a national park? See United States v. Williams, 780 F.2d 802, 803 (9th Cir.1986) (“In general, a promise made by a government employee other than the United States Attorney to recommend dismissal of an indictment cannot bind the United States Attorney.”). Consider whether a similar promise would bind the U.S. Attorney not to prosecute if it were made by a law enforcement officer of the District of Columbia, see United States v. Hudson, 609 F.2d 1326, 1329 (9th Cir.1979); an FBI agent, see United States v. Lombardozzi 467 F.2d 160, 162 (2d Cir.1972); a Customs agent, see Howard, 31 Fed.Cl. at 314; or an SEC enforcement officer, see Dresser Indus. v. United States, 596 F.2d 1231, 1236 (5th Cir.1979).
C. The majority suggests that its ruling will not pose any problems because the Attorney General can issue regulations limiting the authority of her subordinates. Taken at face value, this suggestion is puzzling. As I understand the majority’s rationale, U.S. Attorneys derive their authority to bind the government in immigration matters directly from Congress as a concomitant of their statutory authority to conduct prosecutions. Assuming the majority is right and Congress did give U.S. Attorneys implied authority to bind the government in immigration matters, I don’t see how the Attorney General can limit the scope of that authority, any more than she could limit the scope of any authority granted to an official directly by Congress. Could the Attorney General, for example, issue an internal procedure or regulation repealing the power of U.S. Attorneys to conduct prosecutions pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 547?
In any event, I am aware of no support for the proposition that government officials must issue regulations denying that their subordinates are authorized to do certain things. The Attorney General could doubtless keep a small army of lawyers busy full time issuing regulations abjuring the implied authority the majority has potentially made available to scores of thousands of her subordinates. And she wouldn’t be alone. Every *1348other cabinet secretary, every agency head, every board or regulatory body would have to figure out what a court might consider to be within the implied authority of each of its employees — what authority two circuit judges might find “no reason [to] ... doubt” the employees have — and then proceed to squelch it. Would the President have to issue regulations saying, for example, that Justice Department litigators cannot bind the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers? Would Congress have to load committee reports with lists of powers not implicitly delegated to various government officials? Even if this were possible, what’s the point? Isn’t it far simpler to stick with the assumption, adopted by every other court, that executive branch officials cannot bind the government outside the scope of their express authority?
* * *
As Justice Frankfurter said in Merrill, “[t]he case no doubt presents phases of hardship.” 332 U.S. at 383, 68 S.Ct. at 2. And I can well understand my colleagues’ impulse to try to hold the government to the deal the AUSA made. But there’s just no way to get from here to there, at least not without uprooting much established law and many commonly-held assumptions about how the government works. This is too high a price to pay for giving Mr. Thomas the benefit of his bargain. I respectfully dissent.
Hi * *
In its petition for rehearing the United States cites an internal Justice Department manual which states that U.S. Attorneys may not bind the government on immigration matters without authorization from the Assistant Attorney General for the Criminal Division. Because the government was late in citing the manual, I would not consider it; nor, under my view of the matter, does the manual make any difference. But the majority’s treatment of the manual does point out just how radically my colleagues depart from the prevailing caselaw. Not only does the Attorney General have to expressly deny that her various agents can bind the government as to matters outside the scope of their actual authority, but the government then has the burden of proving that the agent in any given ease has disobeyed that limitation. Maj. op. at 1340.7
The majority rests its analysis on a century-and-a-half-old Supreme Court case that has remained unmentioned in this circuit in more than 800 consecutive volumes of the Federal Reporter. Why, one wonders, did the representation of coverage made to poor Mr. Merrill by the local agents of the Federal Crop Insurance Corporation not “suffice [ ] as prima facie evidence of [the agents’] authority,” shifting to the government “the burden of proof ... to show that [the agents] violated” the limitation on their authority? How different Merrill and hundreds of other cases would have come out if the courts there had said, “We shall not invent an excuse for the government to break its promise. If they have an excuse, let them prove it.” Id at 1343. The majority construes fifty years of caselaw standing on its head; I prefer to keep my feet firmly on the ground.

. So was its predecessor, the Court of Claims. See, e.g., McDonnell Douglas Corp. v. United States, 670 F.2d 156, 159, 229 Ct.Cl. 323 (1982) ("[A]ny deviation from the prescribed wording [of a contractual patent rights clause] was a violation of the regulation and beyond the authority of the contracting officer. Actions taken by that officer beyond his authority are, of course, not binding on the Government.”); Pasadena Hosp. Ass'n v. United States, 618 F.2d 728, 730-31, 223 Ct.Cl. 72 (1980) (refusing to modify Merrill to bind the government to a promise made by a subordinate without actual authority); Fiorentino v. United States, 607 F.2d 963, 967, 221 Ct.Cl. 545 (1979) (‘‘[T]he law is that the U.S. Government is not bound by pronouncements made in its behalf by persons not having actual authority.").

. The majority insists that federal agents must have some implied powers, and gives as an example the unquestioned authority of U.S. Attorneys to enter into plea bargains. In so doing, the majority conflates two very different processes: interpolation and extrapolation. Interpolated powers are those that are less than, and therefore included within, a broader grant of authority. Thus, the power to prosecute includes the power not to prosecute, or to prosecute for a lesser offense. Extrapolated powers, by contrast, go beyond those actually granted to the agent and encroach on the authority given other government agents. The majority’s common sense argument has no application to a case such, as ours, where the doctrine of implied authority is being used to extrapolate one government agent's powers into areas entrusted by law to other agents.

. Beyond importing broad common law agency principles, see maj. op. at 1340 (applying “ordinary principles of agency law”), the majority cites specific sections of the Second Restatement as supporting adoption of the Landau analysis. Id. (quoting Restatement (Second) of Agency § 50 (1958) and citing Restatement § 35). True enough, these sections of the Restatement announce a rule analogous to the Landau doctrine. But Landau in no way relies on the common law agency principles of the Second Restatement which the majority so warmly embraces. The majority's claim notwithstanding, see maj. op. at 1342-43, I do not concede, implicitly or otherwise, that Landau and its progeny have applied common law agency principles to define the relationship between the government and its agents. My guess is that the judges of the Federal Circuit would be horrified to hear their caselaw so characterized.

.The Claims Court has considered the merits of a claim of implied authority under Landau nine *1346other times, and in none of those cases did it find implied authority. See Howard v. United States, 31 Fed.Cl. 297, 314 (1994) (Customs agents have no implied authority to bind government to promise to compensate informants); Buffalo Nat'l Bank v. United States, 26 Cl.Ct. 1436, 1445-46 (1992) (Horn, J.) (citing Landau for the proposition that plaintiff must show the agent contracting for the government had actual authority); Godley v. United States, 26 Cl.Ct. 1075, 1090-91 (1992) (denying the government's motion for summary judgment because there was a genuine issue of fact as to the authority of a representative of a contracting officer to bind the government), vacated, 5 F.3d 1473 (Fed.Cir.1993); California Sand & Gravel, 22 Cl.Ct. at 27 (finding no authority for an Army Corps of Engineers district chief to modify a licensing contract); Goolsby v. United States, 21 Cl.Ct. 629, 632-33 (1990) (Nettesheim, J.) (finding no authority for a government agent to bind FmHA to a contract modification); Essen Mall Properties v. United States, 21 Cl.Ct. 430, 444-45 (1990) (Lydon, J.) (finding no authority for a contracting officer's "authorized representative” or a project manager to bind the Postal Service in contract); Youngstown Steel Equip. Sales, Inc. v. United States, 20 Cl.Ct. 517, 528 n. 14 (1990) (refusing to imply authority for a "line attorney” to bind the Economic Development Administration to a contract) (dicta), rev’d on other grounds, 935 F.2d 281 (Fed.Cir.1991); H. Landau & Co. v. United States, 20 Cl.Ct. 400, 406-07 (1990) (on remand, finding that “authority to issue letters of guarantee was not an 'integral part' " of an SBA agent's duties and refusing to imply that authority); Eliel, 18 Cl.Ct. at 468 (finding plaintiffs failed to allege facts to show implied authority for FmHA administrators to release debtors from their agricultural loans).

. In sorting out what authority Congress intended to delegate to the U.S. Attorneys incident to their power to prosecute, one might, for example, consider that Congress chose to give prose-cutorial authority both to the Attorney General and to the U.S. Attorneys, while it gave the power over immigration matters to the Attorney General alone. It could also be relevant that the power to prosecute has been granted to U.S. Attorneys in one form or another since 1789, see Judiciary Act of 1789, ch. 20, sec. 35, 1 Stat. 73, 92 (1789), and in the intervening two centuries no one has suggested that it carries the implied authority to bind the United States in non-criminal matters related to the subject matter of a criminal prosecution.

. Whether an official will be high-level enough under the majority's analysis is, in any event, not easy to predict. Thus, the majority distinguishes United States v. Williams, 780 F.2d 802 (9th Cir.1986), on the ground that the official whose authority was at issue in that case was a mere Veterans' Administration personnel director, whom the majority relegates to the status of a lower level government official. Maj. op. at 1341. Those of us who have graduated from law school think it self-evident that lawyers are far more important than non-lawyers. But I'm at a loss to find any objective reason why the VA official in Williams should be considered lowly while the AUSA here is big and important.

. The majority refers to an affidavit by the agent as a means of proving he acted without authority, but that would only raise a disputed issue of fact. The opposing party would then be entitled to submit contrary evidence, which means that it would probably be able to depose the agent and obtain other discovery regarding the exact nature and scope of his authority. See Fed.R.Civ.Proc. 56(f).