Campbell v. Allied Van Lines Inc.

FOR PUBLICATION

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS

FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT

EDWARD CAMPBELL, Husband; 

SUSAN CAMPBELL, Wife,

Plaintiffs-Appellees,

v. No. 04-15969

ALLIED VAN LINES INC.; GATES

MOVING & STORAGE INC.; KACHINA  D.C. No.

CV-01-00139-WWE

MOVING & STORAGE, INC., an

OPINION

Arizona corporation; MAYFLOWER

TRANSIT, INC., an Indiana

corporation,

Defendants-Appellants.



Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Arizona

Warren W. Eginton, District Judge, Presiding

Argued and Submitted

April 13, 2005—San Francisco, California

Filed June 7, 2005

Before: Robert R. Beezer, Diarmuid F. O’Scannlain, and

Andrew J. Kleinfeld, Circuit Judges.

Opinion by Judge Beezer;

Dissent by Judge O’Scannlain

6515

CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES 6517

COUNSEL

Daryl Manhart, Burch & Cracchiolo, P.A., Phoenix, Arizona,

for the defendants-appellants.

6518 CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES

Gregory E. Good, Good & Associates, P.C., Tucson, Arizona,

for the plaintiffs-appellees.

OPINION

BEEZER, Circuit Judge:

This appeal involves the awarding of attorney’s fees to

shippers who successfully sue carriers of household goods

under the Carmack Amendment. The appellants in this case

are moving companies. They assert that there is no statutory

basis to support the district court’s award of an attorney’s fee

to shippers who brought a court action without first engaging

in available arbitration. We have jurisdiction under 28 U.S.C.

§ 1291 and we affirm.

I

The relevant facts are not in dispute. Plaintiffs Edward and

Susan Campbell contracted with defendants Kachina Moving

and Storage, Inc., Mayflower Transit, Inc., Gates Moving and

Storage, Inc. and Allied Van Lines, Inc. (collectively “carri-

ers”) to transport their household goods from Arizona to Flor-

ida. The goods were damaged during the move. The plaintiffs

sued the carriers in state court, and the defendants removed

the suit on the basis of federal question jurisdiction arising

under the Carmack Amendment to the Interstate Commerce

Act, 49 U.S.C. § 14706. See 28 U.S.C. §§ 1337, 1445(b). A

jury in the district court found in favor of the plaintiffs,

awarding over $15,000 in compensatory and $31,000 in emo-

tional distress damages.

The district court granted the plaintiffs’ motion for an attor-

ney’s fee of approximately $15,400 (one-third of the total

award), plus costs. The only issue appealed is the plaintiffs’

statutory entitlement to that fee.1 We review this question de

1

Neither party questions the general “American rule,” which dictates

that, “absent explicit congressional authorization,” the prevailing party in

CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES 6519

novo. Baffert v. Cal. Horse Racing Bd., 332 F.3d 613, 617

(9th Cir. 2003).

II

[1] The Carmack Amendment to the Interstate Commerce

Act establishes motor carrier liability for “the actual loss or

injury to the property” a carrier transports. 49 U.S.C.

§ 14706(a)(1); see Ward v. Allied Van Lines, Inc., 231 F.3d

135, 138 (4th Cir. 2000). The Carmack Amendment preempts

many state and common law claims against carriers in an

effort to create a “national scheme of carrier liability for

goods damaged or lost during interstate shipment.” Ward, 231

F.3d at 138 (internal quotation marks omitted); see Hughes

Aircraft Co. v. N. Am. Van Lines, Inc., 970 F.2d 609, 613 (9th

Cir. 1992).

[2] We are required to consider 49 U.S.C. § 14708, which

in part states (emphasis added):

(a) Offering shippers arbitration.—[A] carrier pro-

viding transportation of household goods . . . must

agree to offer in accordance with this section to ship-

pers of household goods arbitration as a means of

settling disputes between such carriers and shippers

....

(b) Arbitration requirements.—

(6) Requests.—The carrier must not require the

shipper to agree to utilize arbitration prior to the time

that a dispute arises. . . .

a court action ordinarily is not entitled to an attorney’s fee award to be

paid by the losing party. Key Tronic Corp. v. United States, 511 U.S. 809,

814-15 (1994) (internal quotation marks omitted).

6520 CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES

(8) Deadline for decision.—The arbitrator must, as

expeditiously as possible but at least within 60 days

of receipt of written notification of the dispute, ren-

der a decision based on the information gathered

[with exceptions] . . . .

(d) Attorney’s fees to shippers.—In any court

action to resolve a dispute between a shipper of

household goods and a carrier providing transporta-

tion or service . . . the shipper shall be awarded rea-

sonable attorney’s fees if—

(1) the shipper submits a claim to the carrier within

120 days after the date the shipment is delivered or

the date the delivery is scheduled, whichever is later;

(2) the shipper prevails in such court action; and

(3)(A) a decision resolving the dispute was not

rendered through arbitration under this section

within the period provided under subsection (b)(8) of

this section or an extension of such period under

such subsection; or

(B) the court proceeding is to enforce a decision

rendered through arbitration under this section and is

instituted after the period for performance under

such decision has elapsed.

The parties’ dispute centers on the meaning of the attor-

ney’s fee provisions in subsection (d). The carriers assert that

these provisions presume participation in the arbitration pro-

gram described in the rest of Section 14708. The shippers

argue that the statute contains no such limitation. We agree

with the shippers.

III

[3] Our analysis begins, as it must, with the text of the stat-

ute in question. Azarte v. Ashcroft, 394 F.3d 1278, 1285 (9th

CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES 6521

Cir. 2005). Under the “plain meaning” rule, “[w]here the lan-

guage [of a statute] is plain and admits of no more than one

meaning the duty of interpretation does not arise, and the

rules which are to aid doubtful meanings need no discussion.”

Carson Harbor Vill., Ltd. v. Unocal Corp., 270 F.3d 863, 878

(9th Cir. 2001) (en banc) (quoting Caminetti v. United States,

242 U.S. 470, 485 (1917)).

[4] This principal rule of statutory construction guides our

examination of Section 14708’s attorney’s fee provisions. It

also leads to our ultimate conclusion: simply put, nothing in

§ 14708(d) limits attorney’s fees to shippers who engage in

arbitration. The subsection applies to “any court action”

involving disputes between a shipper of household goods and

a carrier, and entitles shippers to attorney’s fees if they meet

the first two requirements of (d)(1) and (d)(2) (timely submit-

ting a claim and prevailing in court), and are not barred by

(d)(3)—which merely excludes those claims in which a timely

arbitration decision is reached and does not necessitate court

enforcement. In other words, (d)(3) prevents shippers from

receiving attorney’s fees if the arbitration program “works” as

intended by swiftly resolving the dispute. It has no effect on

shippers, such as the Campbells, who did not engage in arbi-

tration.

We are mindful of the need to construe a statute as a whole.

See Children’s Hosp. & Health Ctr. v. Belshe, 188 F.3d 1090,

1096 (9th Cir. 1999). Like the carriers, we read the attorney’s

fee provisions in light of the arbitration program with which

they share Section 14708. Our interpretation recognizes that

receiving a timely arbitration decision affects a shipper’s eli-

gibility for an attorney’s fee under (d)(3), and that courts must

consult the time period in (b)(8) to establish whether an arbi-

tration decision qualifies as timely. With this understanding in

mind, we see no tension between our interpretation of the

attorney’s fee provisions and the arbitration program.

[5] The carriers read the interplay of (b)(8) and (d)(3)(A)

differently. They argue that refusal to invoke arbitration pre-

6522 CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES

vents (b)(8)’s time period from beginning to run, and there-

fore precludes (d)(3)(A) from ever being satisfied. But

nothing in the text of (d)(3)(A) conditions eligibility upon the

happening of a certain event; rather, a shipper satisfies

(d)(3)(A) as long as a specific event does not occur, namely

the rendering of an arbitration decision within a certain period

of time. Because there was no arbitration decision in the

Campbells’ dispute, (d)(3)(A) poses no barrier to the award of

an attorney’s fee.

The reliance of other courts on Section 14708’s title to sup-

port an alternative interpretation does not convince us other-

wise. See Yakuba v. Atlas Van Lines, 351 F.Supp.2d 482, 490-

91 (W.D. Va. 2004) (citing Collins Moving & Storage Corp.

v. Kirkell, 867 So.2d 1179, 1183-84 (Fla. Ct. App. 2004)).

Section 14708 may be entitled “Dispute settlement program

for household goods carriers,” but that does not give us free

rein to ignore the plain language of subsection (d). As the

Supreme Court explained in Brotherhood of Railroad Train-

men v. B & O Railroad Co., 331 U.S. 519, 528-29 (1947)

(internal citations omitted):

That the heading of [a section] fails to refer to all the

matters which the framers of that section wrote into

the text is not an unusual fact. . . . [T]he title of a

statute and the heading of a section cannot limit the

plain meaning of the text. For interpretive purposes,

they are of use only when it sheds light on some

ambiguous word or phrase.

Accord INS v. St. Cyr, 533 U.S. 289, 308-309 (2001) (quoting

Trainmen). There is nothing ambiguous about the text in

question here. Section 14708(d) is entitled “Attorney’s Fees

to shippers” and expressly applies to “any court action to

resolve a dispute between a shipper of household goods and

a carrier providing transportation or service . . . .” It does not

state that the subsection applies only to court actions pursued

after first invoking arbitration; adding such a limitation may

CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES 6523

be easy enough, but that is the province of Congress, not this

court.

The carriers, however, argue that our straightforward read-

ing of the text fails to properly respect Congress’s intent to

encourage arbitration. As a remedy, the carriers urge supple-

menting the statute’s three enumerated conditions for attor-

ney’s fee eligibility by reading in a fourth, unstated

prerequisite that shippers first invoke arbitration. “We have

long held that there is a strong presumption that the plain lan-

guage of [a] statute expresses congressional intent, rebutted

only in rare and exceptional circumstances, when a contrary

legislative intent is clearly expressed.” United States v.

Tobeler, 311 F.3d 1201, 1203 (9th Cir. 2002) (internal cita-

tion and quotation marks omitted). Section 14708(d) does not

present such an exceptional circumstance. Given the ease with

which Congress expressly listed three eligibility criteria, we

see no reason why Congress would bury a fourth implicitly

within the statute. We decline to add a condition that is con-

spicuously absent from the text when we perceive no incon-

sistency in the statute as it is written.

[6] We are particularly hesitant to depart from the statute’s

text in situations like the one here, in which we can only

attempt to glean the specific details of Congress’s intent by

examining the limited legislative history of the act in ques-

tion. The parties can—and do—argue about the proper object

of this legislation and the effect of a rule that allows shippers

to bypass arbitration without compromising their ability to

receive attorney’s fees. Perhaps, as the carriers argue, a rule

that obligated shippers to submit to arbitration in order to

recover attorney’s fees would more effectively reduce the

number of shipper-carrier lawsuits; then again, perhaps

requiring carriers to agree to binding arbitration of all claims

over $5,000 would do so as well. See 49 U.S.C. § 14708(b)(6).2

2

49 U.S.C. § 14708(b)(6) states, in relevant part (emphasis added): “If

the dispute involves a claim for more than $5,000 and the shipper requests

6524 CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES

Such speculation is beside the point. We are not prepared to

second-guess Congress’s chosen method for adopting a legis-

lative program that may or may not provide the best means to

effectuate some underlying congressional goal. Lacking over-

whelming evidence to suggest that the statute’s language is at

odds with a clearly expressed legislative intent to the contrary,

we defer to the plain meaning of the text actually adopted by

Congress. See Tobeler, 311 F.3d at 1203.

IV

“[T]ime and again,” the Supreme Court has instructed that

“courts must presume that a legislature says in a statute what

it means and means in a statute what it says there. When the

words of a statute are unambiguous, then, this first canon is

also the last: judicial inquiry is complete.” Conn. Nat’l Bank

v. Germain, 503 U.S. 249, 253-54 (1992) (internal quotation

marks and citations omitted). Such is the occasion here. Con-

gress unambiguously authorized the awarding of attorney’s

fees to shippers of household goods who meet three express

conditions. None of those conditions require a shipper to first

invoke arbitration. We decline the carriers’ invitation to

extract an implicit fourth requirement by delving further into

this statute’s inconclusive legislative history.

[7] There is no dispute that the Campbells (1) timely sub-

mitted a claim for the loss of their household goods, (2) pre-

vailed in a court action to resolve this dispute, and (3) had no

arbitration decision rendered in this dispute. The text of 49

U.S.C. § 14708(d) requires nothing more for awarding an

attorney’s fee.

AFFIRMED.

arbitration, such arbitration shall be binding on the parties only if the car-

rier agrees to arbitration.”

The meaning of this provision is not before us, and we express no opin-

ion as to it. We cite it only to question the carriers’ assertion that Section

14708 as a whole plainly demonstrates a legislative intent to encourage

arbitration above other considerations.

CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES 6525

O’SCANNLAIN, Circuit Judge, dissenting:

This exercise in statutory interpretation forces us to con-

front the fact that the most literal interpretation of a phrase is

not always the most natural and reasonable one. For that rea-

son, I cannot agree with the majority’s interpretation of 49

U.S.C. § 14708(d).

That subsection awards attorney fees to a shipper prevailing

in a lawsuit against a carrier only if

(A) a decision resolving the dispute was not ren-

dered through arbitration under this section within

the period provided . . . or

(B) the court proceeding is to enforce a decision

rendered through arbitration under this section and is

instituted after the period for performance under

such decision has elapsed.

49 U.S.C. § 14708(d)(3)(A)-(B). On the majority’s reading,

§ 14708(d)(3)(A) applies even when no arbitration occurs at

all because the shipper elects to head straight into court. In its

insistence that this reading of § 14708(d)(3)(A) is not only

preferable but unambiguously correct, the majority adheres to

a decontextualized literalism that even the staunchest defend-

ers of textualism eschew. See Antonin Scalia, A Matter of

Interpretation 24 (1997) (“[T]he good textualist is not a liter-

alist . . . .”); Smith v. United States, 508 U.S. 223, 242 (1993)

(Scalia, J., dissenting) (“When someone asks, ‘Do you use a

cane?,’ he is not inquiring whether you have your grandfa-

ther’s silver-handled walking stick on display in the hall.”).

I do not deny that it is possible to read the words of subsec-

tion (A) as the majority does, but our task is to find the most

ordinary, natural, and reasonable interpretation of the provi-

sion’s language. See Bailey, 516 U.S. at 145. The provision

appears in the midst of a statute designed to promote and to

6526 CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES

facilitate arbitration of claims under the Carmack Amend-

ment. Yet the majority’s interpretation of the attorney-fee pro-

vision turns it into a powerful incentive for shippers not to

pursue arbitration. A shipper who takes his claim straight to

court and wins has his legal costs paid by the carrier, while

a shipper who submits the claim for arbitration must pay not

only his own legal fees but part of the cost of the arbitration

as well. See 49 U.S.C. § 14708(b)(5).

Only an unnatural literalism permits the majority to con-

clude that the statute’s text compels this counterintuitive

result. Imagine that, one summer’s afternoon, a father turns to

his son and says, “If you’d like to, we’ll go to the ballpark this

afternoon and hit some balls. And I’ll tell you what—if your

old Dad doesn’t hit a baseball over the fences, he promises to

buy you some ice cream.”

“Great, Dad,” says the son, “but I don’t want to play base-

ball this afternoon. Let’s play football in the yard instead.”

The father agrees, and after a few spirited hours of play, the

two head back to the house for dinner. As they brush the dirt

out of their clothes, the son says, “Well, Dad, you owe me an

ice cream. You didn’t hit a single baseball over the fences.”

Were the majority present at this scene and called upon to

adjudicate the conflict, the father would protest in vain that

his conditional promise of ice cream depended on the son’s

acceptance of his invitation to play baseball. After all, the

majority would insist, the father’s words were unambiguous:

“If I don’t hit a baseball over the fences, I promise to buy you

some ice cream.” And the majority would conclude that—to

paraphrase its own reasoning—“given the ease with which the

father expressly listed one eligibility criterion (his failure to

hit a home run),” there was “no reason why he would bury a

second (the son’s acceptance of the invitation to play base-

ball) implicitly within” his proposal. See Majority op., supra

at 6523.

CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES 6527

But that is not how language works, either in conversation

or in statutory interpretation. We begin with a statute’s plain

meaning, of course, but plain meaning is not meaning

divorced from context. See Verizon Communications, Inc. v.

FCC, 535 U.S. 467, 499-500 (2002) (rejecting a “plain-

meaning argument [that] ignores the statutory setting in which

[the provision at issue] occurs”); Bailey v. United States, 516

U.S. 137, 145 (“[T]he meaning of statutory language, plain or

not, depends on context.” (alteration in original)). A reason-

able person would understand the father to be promising ice

cream only if the son agrees to play baseball and the father

hits no home runs. Similarly, in my view, the most reasonable

interpretation of § 14708(d)(3)(A) is that it makes attorney

fees available if the shipper takes advantage of the opportu-

nity for arbitration that the carrier is statutorily bound to pro-

vide and no decision is rendered within the sixty-day period

provided.

Turning to extrinsic sources—as we may when statutes are

ambiguous, see Int’l Ass’n of Machinists & Aerospace Work-

ers, Local Lodge 964 v. BF Goodrich Aerospace Aerostruc-

tures Group, 387 F.3d 1046, 1051-52 (9th Cir. 2004)—only

strengthens the case against the majority’s interpretation. The

current § 14708 is the result of Congress’s 1995 amendments

to the dispute-settlement provisions of the Carmack Amend-

ment. The earlier statute allowed, but did not require, carriers

to offer arbitration. See 49 U.S.C. § 11711 (1995) (repealed

1995). It provided in relevant part:

(d) In any court action to resolve a dispute between

a shipper of household goods and a motor common

carrier providing transportation subject to the juris-

diction of the Commission under subchapter II of

chapter 105 of this title concerning the transportation

of household goods by such carrier, the shipper shall

be awarded reasonable attorney’s fees if—

(1) the shipper submits a claim to the car-

rier within 120 days after the date the ship-

6528 CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES

ment is delivered or the date the delivery is

scheduled, whichever is later;

(2) the shipper prevails in such court

action; and

(3) (A) no dispute settlement program

approved under this section was avail-

able for use by the shipper to resolve the

dispute; or

(B) a decision resolving the dispute

was not rendered under a dispute settle-

ment program approved under this sec-

tion within the period provided under

subsection (b)(8) of this section or an

extension of such period under such

subsection; or

(C) the court proceeding is to enforce

a decision rendered under a dispute set-

tlement program approved under this

section and is instituted after the period

for performance under such decision has

elapsed.

49 U.S.C. § 11711(d) (1995) (repealed 1995).

Notably, former § 11711(d)(3)(B) is identical for all rele-

vant purposes to current § 14708(d)(3)(A), the provision at

issue in this case: each grants attorney fees when “a decision

resolving the dispute was not rendered [in arbitration] within

the period provided.”1 It would be extremely odd if the two

1

The only difference is that the phrase “under a dispute settlement pro-

gram approved under this section” has been replaced with “through arbi-

tration under this section,” a change that merely reflects the fact that

arbitration programs need no longer be “approved” by the Commission.

CAMPBELL v. ALLIED VAN LINES 6529

provisions, whose text is essentially the same, meant two

sharply different things. Yet that is what the majority’s hold-

ing implies; for the former § 11711(d)(3)(B) cannot reason-

ably bear the interpretation the majority would place upon

current § 14708(d)(3)(A). That interpretation would render

subsection (A) of the earlier statute wholly redundant and

unnecessary, because whenever “no dispute settlement pro-

gram approved under [§ 11711] was available for use by the

shipper to resolve the dispute,” it would necessarily have been

true that “a decision resolving the dispute was not rendered

under a dispute settlement program approved under this sec-

tion within the period provided.”

Because I believe that the plain meaning of the language of

§ 14708(d)(3)(A) in its context2 is that attorney fees are avail-

able only when shippers attempt arbitration but cannot obtain

a decision within the allotted time—and because that interpre-

tation, unlike the majority’s, is consonant with the statute’s

history—I respectfully dissent.

2

Part of the relevant context is the title of § 14708: “Dispute settlement

program for household carriers.” The majority’s interpretation turns

§ 14708(d)(3)(A) into a general attorney-fee provision whose scope

extends well beyond cases in which a dispute-settlement program is

involved. The “title of a statute and the heading of a section are tools

available for the resolution of a doubt” about the meaning of a statutory

provision. Almendarez-Torres v. United States, 523 U.S. 224, 234 (1998)

(internal quotation marks omitted).