Jeroski v. Fed. Mine Safety

• Decision Date: 11 October 2012
• Docket Number: No. 11–3687.,11–3687.
• Citation: 697 F.3d 651
• Parties: Edward JEROSKI, doing business as USA Cleaning Service and Building Maintenance, Petitioner, v. FEDERAL MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH REVIEW COMMISSION and U.S. Secretary of Labor, Respondents.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

697 F.3d 651

Edward JEROSKI, doing business as USA Cleaning Service and Building Maintenance, Petitioner,

v.FEDERAL MINE SAFETY AND HEALTH REVIEW COMMISSION and U.S. Secretary of Labor, Respondents.

No. 11–3687.

United States Court of Appeals,Seventh Circuit.

Argued Sept. 14, 2012.

Decided Oct. 11, 2012.

Roy Brian Hendrix (argued), Attorney, Patton Boggs, Washington, DC, Daniel G. Wills, Swanson, Martin & Bell, LLP, Chicago, IL, for Petitioner.

Samuel C. Lord (argued), Attorney, Department of Labor, Arlington, VA, John T. Sullivan, Attorney, Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, Office of the General Counsel, Washington, DC, for Respondents.

Before POSNER, ROVNER, and WILLIAMS, Circuit Judges.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

We are asked to reverse an administrative denial of an application for an award of attorneys' fees under the Equal Access to Justice Act, 5 U.S.C. § 504. The Act provides, so far as bears on this case, that “a prevailing party” shall be awarded “fees and other expenses” incurred by it in an “adversary adjudication” before a federal agency unless “the position of the agency was substantially justified.” § 504(a)(1). The parallel provision applicable to a judicial (as distinct from an administrative) adjudication, 28 U.S.C. § 2412(a)(1), is not involved.

The petitioner, USA Cleaning, is a proprietorship with fewer than 10 employees. (A proprietorship is not a legal entity, but merely a name under which the owner, who is the real party in interest, does business. York Group, Inc. v. Wuxi Taihu Tractor Co., 632 F.3d 399, 403 (7th Cir.2011); Bartlett v. Heibl, 128 F.3d 497, 500 (7th Cir.1997); see 5 U.S.C. § 504(b)(1)(B). We have reformed the caption accordingly, but will continue to refer to USA Cleaning as the petitioner, as the parties do.) It provides janitorial services, mainly to a cement plant in Logansport, Indiana owned by Essroc Cement Corporation. But after an inspection of the plant by an inspector from the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, the administration ordered the three janitors whom the inspector had noticed doing cleaning work in the plant to undergo 24 hours of safety training. The mine-safety administration also issued what is called a “withdrawal order,” forbidding USA Cleaning to allow these janitors to reenter the plant until they completed the training. 30 U.S.C. § 814(g)(1).

A cement plant is not a mine—cement is made, not mined—and obviously people who clean a cement plant are not “miners” in the ordinary sense of the word. But federal mine-safety regulations, the validity of which is not challenged, define a “miner” as anyone who “works at a mine and who is engaged in mining operations,” and define “mining operations” to include “maintenance and repair of mining equipment.” 30 C.F.R. §§ 46.2(g)(1)(i), 46.2(h). And “mine” includes any “facilit[y] ... used in ... the milling of [extracted] minerals.” 30 U.S.C. § 802(h)(1). The minerals from which cement is made are mined, and the mined minerals are then milled in plants such as Essroc's. The mine-safety administration was concerned that by working in the plant, and specifically in plant buildings in which cement was being milled, the janitors were being exposed to safety hazards similar to those of the workers who do the actual milling, and so were “miners.” That they were not employees of Essroc, but of an independent contractor, is acknowledged to be irrelevant.

Still, to regard them as having been engaged in milling, and specifically in “maintenance and repair” of the equipment Essroc uses in milling, is a considerable stretch; and we'll assume, though without having to decide, that it's a stretch that breaks the elastic band that is an agency's interpretation of its own regulations.No matter. The petitioner must lose even if the mine-safety administration exceeded its authority in ordering the safety training of the janitors and, pending completion of that training, barring them from the plant.

When Essroc learned of the withdrawal order, it offered to provide legal assistance to USA Cleaning at no cost to the tiny company, and within a week the lawyers ran up a bill of $22,000. The lawyers initiated on the company's behalf a proceeding before the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission to vacate the order—a “contest proceeding”—on the ground that the janitors were not engaged in mining operations. A week after issuing the withdrawal order the mine-safety administration vacated it, though without acknowledging error in having issued it. The review commission followed suit by dismissing, without prejudice, USA Cleaning's contest proceeding. Though it had incurred no legal expense as a consequence of the order, USA Cleaning asked the mine-safety administration to award it the $22,000 in legal fees that Essroc had paid the lawyers to labor to get the order lifted. The administration refused, precipitating an appeal by USA Cleaning first to the review commission, which upheld the refusal, and now to us.

An initial peculiarity about the petition for review in our court (besides the misnaming of the petitioner) should be noted. Not the Federal Mine Safety and Health Administration, but a separate body, the Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, is named as the respondent along with the Secretary of Labor. The review commission is the equivalent of a court. It did not issue the order challenged by the petitioner, but merely upheld the refusal of the mine-safety administration—the agency that had by issuing the order “conduct[ed] an adversary adjudication” with the petitioner—to award attorneys' fees. The administration is an agency in the Department of Labor, so the Secretary of Labor is a proper respondent—but the only proper respondent, so we dismiss the review commission.

The Secretary argues that USA Cleaning was not a “prevailing party” in the aborted agency proceeding because the mine-safety administration merely withdrew its withdrawal order—it can reissue it if it wants to. No legal right of USA Cleaning has yet been vindicated, no order entered that would establish the right of the janitors to do cleaning in Essroc's plant without 24 hours of safety training. All eight courts of appeals to have considered the meaning of “prevailing party” in the Equal Access to Justice Act would have denied that status to USA Cleaning. See, e.g., Green Aviation Management Co. v. FAA, 676 F.3d 200, 202–03 (D.C.Cir.2012); Turner v. National Transportation Safety Board, 608 F.3d 12, 16 (D.C.Cir.2010); United States v. Milner, 583 F.3d 1174, 1196–97 (9th Cir.2009); Aronov v. Napolitano, 562 F.3d 84, 89 (1st Cir.2009) (en banc); Ma v. Chertoff, 547 F.3d 342 (2d Cir.2008) (per curiam); Morillo–Cedron v. District Director for U.S. Citizenship & Immigration Services, 452 F.3d 1254, 1257–58 (11th Cir.2006); Goldstein v. Moatz, 445 F.3d 747, 751 (4th Cir.2006); Marshall v. Commissioner of Social Security, 444 F.3d 837, 840 (6th Cir.2006); Thomas v. National Science Foundation, 330 F.3d 486, 492 n. 1 (D.C.Cir.2003); Brickwood Contractors v. United States, 288 F.3d 1371, 1379 (Fed.Cir.2002).

But we are not one of the eight circuits; this is our first brush with the issue. And except for Turner and Green Aviation, the decisions we've just cited concern the section of the Equal Access to Justice Act that deals with judicial rather than administrative adjudication. But there is no materialdifference between the two sections, at least so far as relates to the meaning of “prevailing party.” And while not all the decisions involve voluntary dismissals, all hold that a “prevailing party” is a party that obtains relief which determines or affects its legal status, as would have happened in this case had the review commission, rather than dismissing the contest proceeding without prejudice, ruled that USA Cleaning's employees were not “miners” within the meaning of the mine-safety act and the regulations under it.

Yet are those decisions sound? All rely on the Supreme Court's decision in Buckhannon Board & Care Home, Inc. v. West Virginia Dep't of Health & Human Resources, 532 U.S. 598, 121 S.Ct. 1835, 149 L.Ed.2d 855 (2001), a case involving not the Equal Access to Justice Act but the Fair Housing Amendments Act of 1988 and the Americans with Disabilities Act. Both of those acts provide that “the court, in its discretion, may allow the prevailing party ... a reasonable attorney's fee.” 42 U.S.C. §§ 12205, 3613(c)(2). Buckhannon calls “prevailing party” a “legal term of art” designating a party that obtains a judgment or other relief from a court; defines “judgment” to mean an enforceable judgment, which a dismissal without prejudice is not; finds the legislative history too inconclusive to warrant the further departure sought by Buckhannon from the “American Rule” that party each to a lawsuit bears its own litigation expenses (as distinct from England's “loser pays” rule); and points out that to allow fee shifting in cases that a court had dismissed at the government's behest, without prejudice, would discourage such dismissals and thus might actually disserve the interests of persons who get into legal tangles with the government.

The key term in the Equal Access to Justice Act is “prevailing party,” and is the identical term that was the Supreme Court's focus in Buckhannon. Other terms in the Act differ from terms in the fee-shifting provisions of the housing and disabilities statutes, however, and USA Cleaning argues for example that the requirement imposed by the Equal Access to Justice Act but not by the statutes at issue in Buckhannon that a party seeking an award of fees show no “substantial justification” for the government's litigating position obviates the concern expressed in Buckhannon with allowing an attorneys' fee award to a plaintiff who “simply [had filed] a nonfrivolous but nonetheless potentially meritless lawsuit.” 532 U.S. at 606, 121 S.Ct. 1835. But the difference is...