United Mine Workers of America v. Kleppe

• Decision Date: 13 September 1977
• Docket Number: No. 76-1377,76-1377
• Citation: 561 F.2d 1258
• Parties: 1977-1978 O.S.H.D. ( 22,141 UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Petitioner, v. Thomas S. KLEPPE, Secretary of the Interior, Respondent, and Inland Steel Company, Intervenor-Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 1258

561 F.2d 1258

1977-1978 O.S.H.D. ( 22,141

UNITED MINE WORKERS OF AMERICA, Petitioner, v. Thomas S. KLEPPE, Secretary of the Interior, Respondent and Inland Steel Company, Intervenor-Respondent.

No. 76-1377.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued Jan. 5, 1977.

Decided Sept. 13, 1977.

Harrison Combs, Washington, D. C., Steven B. Jacobson, Cambridge, Mass., for petitioner.

Robert E. Kopp, Michael Kimmel, Dept. of Justice, Civ. Div., Appellate Section, Washington, D. C., for respondent.

Before SWYGERT and BAUER, Circuit Judges, and CAMPBELL, Senior District Judge. ^*

BAUER, Circuit Judge.

Petitioner seeks review of an order of the Board of Mine Operations Appeals affirming an administrative law judge's dismissal of a claim for compensation brought under Section 110(a) of the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act, 30 U.S.C. § 820(a), because of petitioner's failure to file the claim within the 45-day period prescribed by a Department of Interior regulation, 43 C.F.R. § 4.561. Petitioner argues (1) that the agency should have looked to the relevant state statute of limitations rather than to its own regulation to determine if the claim had been timely filed; (2) that it was not within the agency's delegated rulemaking power to create a "statute of limitations" period placing a "substantive restriction" on a right created by Congress; and (3) that the limitations period actually prescribed is so unreasonably short as to be arbitrary and capricious. As petitioner has exhausted his administrative remedies under the Act, we have jurisdiction under 30 U.S.C. § 816(a) to review the Board's order. We affirm for the reasons noted below.

I.

Section 110(a) of the Federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act provides that miners idled by withdrawal orders issued by federal inspectors as a result of an operator's violation of a federal health or safety standard are entitled to compensation from the operator for specified periods during which the mine is closed. 30 U.S.C. § 820(a). Although the statute creates a right to compensation, it does not provide any procedure by which that right may be enforced or any limitations period within which claims for compensation must be filed. However, the Secretary of the Interior, who is charged with responsibility for administering and implementing the provisions of the Act, has promulgated regulations under the rulemaking authority delegated him by 30 U.S.C. § 957 that allow for administrative adjudication of compensation claims and require that such claims be filed "within 45 days after the date of issuance of the withdrawal order which gives rise to the claim," 43 C.F.R. § 4.561.

Petitioner-union, which is authorized by the Secretary's regulations to file compensation claims on behalf of its members, 43 C.F.R. § 4.560(c), brought a claim on behalf of 300 miners idled by a withdrawal order issued by federal mine inspectors on June 21, 1975. Because petitioner's claim was filed on November 25, 1975, about five months after issuance of the withdrawal order from which the claim arose, a Department of Interior administrative law judge dismissed the claim sua sponte as untimely filed under 43 C.F.R. § 4.561. The Board of Mine Operations Appeals affirmed the administrative law judge's order, and petitioner seeks review here.

II.

Petitioner first argues that we must set aside the Board's dismissal of its compensation claim because "state statutes of limitations govern the timeliness of federal causes of action unless Congress has specifically provided otherwise." United Auto Workers v. Hoosier Cardinal Corp., 383 U.S. 696, 703-04, 86 S.Ct. 1107, 1112, 16 L.Ed.2d 192 (1966). As Congress did not specify an applicable limitations period for compensation claims in 30 U.S.C. § 820(a), petitioner says that Hoosier Cardinal requires that we look to the relevant state statute of limitations rather than to the agency-promulgated regulation to determine the timeliness of its claim.

We agree that petitioner has stated the general rule applied when suit is brought in federal court to enforce a federal cause of action for which Congress has not specified a limitations period. In such cases, courts generally refuse to infer that Congress's silence indicates an intent that the federal claim not be subject to any limitations period for "(t)his would be utterly repugnant to the genius of our laws." Adams v. Woods, 2 Cranch. 336, 342, 2 L.Ed. 297 (1805); accord, Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U.S. 610, 616-17, 15 S.Ct. 217, 39 L.Ed. 280 (1895); Baker v. F. & F. Investment, 420 F.2d 1191, 1194-95 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 821, 91 S.Ct. 42, 27 L.Ed.2d 49 (1970). Accordingly, the courts imply a limitations period within the interstices of the federal cause of action on the theory that Congress has left the fashioning of this remedial detail of its legislative scheme to judicial determination, Holmberg v. Armbrecht, 327 U.S. 392, 395, 66 S.Ct. 582, 90 L.Ed. 743 (1946), and the limitations period implied is normally borrowed from state law whenever adoption of the state limitations period would be consistent with the underlying purposes of Congress's legislative scheme. Occidental Life Insurance Co. v. EEOC, --- U.S. ----, 97 S.Ct. 2447, 2455, 53 L.Ed.2d 402 (1977).

In a case such as this, however, we do not believe the Hoosier Cardinal rule calling for reference to state law to determine the timeliness of a federal cause of action has any application. Petitioner has invoked the original jurisdiction, not of any federal court, but of an administrative agency that, pursuant to an express grant of rulemaking authority from Congress, has prescribed a time period for the filing of claims solely for use in its own administrative proceedings. In view of the fact that Congress has entrusted the agency with the power to promulgate any regulations it deems appropriate to carry out the provisions of Congress's legislative scheme, 30 U.S.C. § 957, it would be anomalous for us to infer that Congress intended that state law and not the agency's own regulation governs the timeliness of claims filed with the agency. The rationale underlying Hoosier Cardinal cannot obtain here, for reference to state law would be entirely inconsistent with Congress's purpose in committing the intersticial lawmaking responsibility made necessary by the inevitable incompleteness of its regulatory legislation to the expertise of the administrative agency charged with enforcement of the statute. Cf. United States v. Little Lake Misere Land Co., 412 U.S. 580, 592 n.10, 93 S.Ct. 2389, 37 L.Ed.2d 187 (1973). Simply put, by authorizing the agency to act as its surrogate in fashioning the remedial details of its legislative scheme, Congress has "otherwise provided" that state law not be applied in a case such as this. Assuming that the regulation prescribing a time period for the filing of claims within the agency's administrative jurisdiction is itself a valid product of the agency's rulemaking authority under 30 U.S.C. § 957, we have no doubt that the agency must follow its own regulation rather than look to state law to determine the timeliness of petitioner's administrative claim.

III.

Petitioner next argues that promulgation of a statute of limitations period governing compensation claims authorized by 30 U.S.C. § 820(a) is not within the Secretary of the Interior's power to issue "such regulations as (he) deems appropriate to carry out any provision of this (Act)." 30 U.S.C. § 957. Petitioner's theory is that the Secretary's rulemaking power extends only to procedural matters and does not authorize him to place a substantive restriction on a right created by Congress, such as the statute of limitations period at issue here, which is a "substantive" rather than a "procedural" rule under the authority of Guaranty Trust v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 65 S.Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079 (1945).

We believe the petitioner has wholly mischaracterized the nature of the regulation challenged, which provides only that an "application for compensation shall be filed within 45 days after the date of the withdrawal order which gives rise to the claim." 43 C.F.R. § 4.561. That regulation is not a "statute of limitations" designed to protect mine operators from stale claims, but simply a condition precedent to invocation of the agency's administrative jurisdiction analogous to other procedural rules setting time limits for the filing of pleadings, Fed.R.Civ.P. 12(a), and the taking of appeals from a final judgment, Fed.R.App.P. 4, or an administrative order, 43 C.F.R. § 4.600. It places no substantive restriction on the right to compensation created by Congress, but merely conditions the availability of the administrative remedy the Secretary has provided pursuant to his rulemaking authority.

It is true that the agency's regulation is analogous to a statute of limitations in the narrow sense that the effect of not complying with the regulation is to defeat petitioner's right to obtain relief in the administrative forum. That the application of the regulation in a particular case has such an effect, however, does not necessarily mean that the time limits prescribed in the regulation constitute a "substantive restriction" on the underlying right petitioner sought to enforce. Cf. Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460, 468-69, 85 S.Ct. 1136, 14 L.Ed.2d 8 (1965); Baker v. F. & F. Investment Co., 420 F.2d 1191, 1194 (7th Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 821, 91 S.Ct. 42, 27 L.Ed.2d 49 (1970). The regulation simply conditions petitioner's access to the agency's forum; it does not...