U.S. v. Rojas

• Decision Date: 10 November 2005
• Docket Number: No. 04-10877.,04-10877.
• Parties: UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Jorge ROJAS, a.k.a. Chittie, Defendant, Athans Bail Bonds, Inc., George Athans, Interested-Parties-Appellants Cross-Appellees, Lidia Pulchades, Interested-Party-Appellee Cross-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eleventh Circuit

429 F.3d 1317

UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff, v. Jorge ROJAS, a.k.a. Chittie, Defendant Athans Bail Bonds, Inc., George Athans, Interested-Parties-Appellants Cross-Appellees Lidia Pulchades, Interested-Party-Appellee Cross-Appellant.

No. 04-10877.

United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit.

November 10, 2005.

John H. Lipinski, Atty. at Law, Hollywood, FL, for Athans Bail Bonds, Inc. and George Athans.

Maria Sampedro-Iglesia, Atty. at Law, Coral Gables, FL, for Lidia Pulchades.

Anne R. Schultz, Miami, FL, for U.S.

Appeals from the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

Before BIRCH, CARNES and RONEY, Circuit Judges.

CARNES, Circuit Judge:

In June of 1994 Jorge Rojas was arrested in Miami on charges of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute cocaine and conspiracy to import cocaine. The district court set his bail in the amount of $60,000.

In order to help secure Rojas' release, Lidia Pulchades signed an indemnification agreement with Athans Bail Bond, the surety which actually posted the $60,000 bond for Rojas.¹ Pulchades pledged her house as collateral, not to the court in order to secure the bail bond, but to the bail bond company in order to secure her obligation to indemnify it should the company have to pay on the corporate surety bond it posted on Rojas' behalf. She testified that she was not afraid of losing her house because she knew Rojas — a neighbor of her mother — was a "straight person," who could be counted on to show up in court. She was wrong about that.

After pleading guilty to one of the charges against him, Rojas failed to appear at sentencing on December 22, 1994. The next day the district court revoked the bond that Athans Bail Bonds had posted and entered an order forfeiting its collateral. A final judgment of forfeiture was entered on January 20, 1995. The Government never attempted to enforce that judgment against Athans Bail Bonds. Nonetheless, the bonding company began a foreclosure action against Pulchades based on her indemnification obligations to it. To avoid losing her house, which was the collateral she had put up to secure performance of her obligations, Pulchades obtained a second mortgage on it for $60,000 and paid that full amount to Athans Bail Bonds.

In December of 1998, while Christmas shopping at a Miami mall, Pulchades saw Rojas. After unsuccessfully attempting to apprehend him, she reported the sighting to Athans Bail Bonds. As a result, an investigator working for the company captured Rojas not long thereafter. He was jailed, and in March of 1999 was sentenced to prison.

Even though she was not actually a party to the corporate surety bond that Athans Bail Bonds had posted in the district court, Pulchades filed a motion to set aside the forfeiture of that bond in view of Rojas' capture. (She filed it in April of 2001, contending that she was not informed of the capture until shortly before then.) The district court granted that motion, entering on June 8, 2001 an order setting aside the forfeiture of the bond that Athans Bail Bonds had posted with the court.

On September 14, 2001, Pulchades filed with the district court a motion to vacate which asked the court not only to set aside the final judgment of forfeiture but also to order Athans Bail Bonds to return to Pulchades the amount she had paid it. After Athans Bail Bonds failed to appear for a hearing on the motion, the district court entered an order on November 7, 2001 granting the motion in both respects. The order relieved Athans Bail Bonds of the obligation to pay out anything on the bond it had posted with the court, but required it to refund to Pulchades $60,000, which is the full amount she had paid to it under the indemnification agreement.

Athans Bail Bonds appealed, and we vacated the district court's order and remanded for further proceedings because the company had not been afforded sufficient notice of the hearing on Pulchades' motion. On remand, the case was referred to a magistrate judge, who held an evidentiary hearing.

At the hearing Athans Bail Bonds contended that it had used the entire $60,000 Pulchades paid it for expenses incurred in searching for and apprehending Rojas. More fundamentally, Athans Bail Bonds argued that any dispute between it and its indemnitor, Pulchades, should be brought in a separate civil proceeding. In his report and recommendation, the magistrate judge did not address that contention. Addressing the merits of the dispute, the magistrate judge found that many of the claimed expenses were either overstated or nonexistent; he calculated that Athans Bail Bonds had $37,633.55 in legitimate expenses and recommended that the district court order the company and its president, George Athans, to pay $22,366.45 to Pulchades. Athans Bail Bonds objected to the report and recommendation both as to the findings about its expenses and as to the failure to address its argument that the dispute should be brought "in a civil suit, probably in a state court."

In an order entered January 23, 2004, the district court adopted the report and recommendation of the magistrate judge, and in addition to vacating the forfeiture of the appearance bond it ordered Athans Bail Bonds and George Athans to "return $22,366.45 to claimant, Lidia Pulchades." It is that part of the order Athans Bail Bonds and George Athans appeal.

The two of them make four arguments to us. First, they argue that George Athans was improperly held personally liable for the obligations or debts of Athans Bail Bonds, a corporation. Second, they argue that Pulchades does not have standing in a federal criminal proceeding to seek recovery from them of the amount she paid under the indemnification agreement she had with Athans Bail Bonds. Third, they argue that the district court should have allowed Athans Bail Bonds to claim all of its expenses for the apprehension of Rojas, including expenses the court disallowed as part of the company's ordinary costs of doing business. Fourth, they argue that the district court judge should have recused himself. We do not reach any of these arguments, however, because it is clear the district court did not have subject matter jurisdiction over the dispute between the parties about whether Athans Bail Bonds or its president was required to refund to Pulchades the money that she had paid under their indemnification contract.

Federal courts are courts of limited jurisdiction. Keene Corp. v. United States, 508 U.S. 200, 207, 113 S.Ct. 2035, 2040, 124 L.Ed.2d 118 (1993); Delaware v. Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. 673, 692, 106 S.Ct. 1431, 1442, 89 L.Ed.2d 674 (1986); Taylor v. Appleton, 30 F.3d 1365, 1367 (11th Cir.1994). As the Supreme Court has reminded us, "the Court early in its history wisely adopted a presumption that every federal court is without jurisdiction unless the contrary affirmatively appears from the record." Van Arsdall, 475 U.S. at 692, 106 S.Ct. at 1442 (internal citations and marks omitted); accord Turner v. Bank of N. Am., 4 U.S. (4 Dall.) 8, 10, 1 L.Ed. 718 (1799) (explaining that, because a federal court is a court of limited jurisdiction, "the fair presumption is . . . that a cause is without its jurisdiction, until the contrary appears."); Fitzgerald v. Seaboard Sys. R.R., Inc., 760 F.2d 1249, 1251 (11th Cir.1985) ("[S]ince the courts of the United States are courts of limited jurisdiction, there is a presumption against its existence.") (internal marks omitted).

We should not overstep the limits on our jurisdiction and exercise power we do not have over disputes Congress has not given us authority to decide. Keene, 508 U.S. at 207, 113 S.Ct. at 2040 ("Congress has the constitutional authority to define the jurisdiction of the lower federal courts, and, once the lines are drawn, `limits upon federal jurisdiction. . . must be neither disregarded nor evaded.'") (internal citations omitted).

Congress has given district courts jurisdiction to forfeit bail bonds posted with the court in federal criminal cases, to remit forfeitures, and to exonerate obligors and sureties. Fed.R.Crim.P. 46(e)-(f) (2001).² This appeal is not about any of that. It involves instead a contractual dispute. On one side of that dispute is Athans Bail Bond, a company which served as a surety, and its president. On the other side is Lidia Pulchades, an indemnitor of the company on one of its surety obligations. Congress has not conferred jurisdiction on the federal courts to decide this kind of contractual dispute. The parties do not have diverse citizenship, and even if they did, the amount in controversy is not enough for diversity jurisdiction purposes.

After the criminal defendant was caught, the district court on Pulchades' motion set aside its prior revocation order and set aside the judgment of forfeiture. Rule 46(e)(2)³ authorizes district courts to do that, assuming that the indemnitors of sureties have standing to move under the rule. That is a big assumption but it is not one that we must test and resolve here. We need not, because it is clear that neither subpart (e)(2) nor any other provision of Rule 46 authorizes district courts to go beyond setting aside revocations and vacating forfeitures to ordering the refund of money a surety had collected from its indemnitor under their contract. Rule 46 is not about indemnification. It is not about the contractual or other state-law rights of an indemnitor. It does not purport to give district courts jurisdiction to decide disputes arising under indemnification contracts.

Rule 46(e)(2) only authorizes a court to set aside bail forfeitures. Rule 46(f)⁴ only authorizes courts to exonerate a bond obligor (here the bail bond company) from its obligations under the bond and to release any bail to the obligor. Neither of those rule provisions nor any other provision of Rule 46 purports to authorize a court to decide the competing contractual claims arising between an obligor and...