PUBLISHED
UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT
WILLIAM J. NEESE; DANIEL M.
JOHNSON,
Plaintiffs-Appellants,
v.
MIKE JOHANNS, Secretary of No. 06-2119
Agriculture; UNITED STATES
DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE;
COMMODITY CREDIT CORPORATION;
PHILIP MORRIS USA, INCORPORATED,
Defendants-Appellees.
Appeal from the United States District Court
for the Western District of Virginia, at Abingdon.
Samuel G. Wilson, District Judge.
(1:05-cv-00071-sgw)
Argued: December 5, 2007
Decided: March 3, 2008
Before NIEMEYER and SHEDD, Circuit Judges, and
Leonie M. BRINKEMA, United States District Judge for the
Eastern District of Virginia, sitting by designation.
Affirmed by published opinion. Judge Brinkema wrote the opinion,
in which Judge Niemeyer and Judge Shedd joined.
COUNSEL
ARGUED: Daniel S. Haltiwanger, RICHARDSON, PATRICK,
WESTBROOK & BRICKMAN, L.L.C., Barnwell, South Carolina,
2 NEESE v. JOHANNS
for Appellants. R. Hewitt Pate, HUNTON & WILLIAMS, Richmond,
Virginia; Sarang Damle, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF
JUSTICE, Washington, D.C., for Appellees. ON BRIEF: Daniel H.
Caldwell, Cameron Scott Bell, PENN, STUART & ESKRIDGE,
Abingdon, Virginia, for Appellants. Peter D. Keisler, Assistant Attor-
ney General, John L. Brownlee, United States Attorney, Mark B.
Stern, Eric J. Feigin, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUS-
TICE, Washington, D.C., for Federal Appellees. Lonnie D. Nunley,
III, Kevin C. Walsh, Carrie B. Freed, HUNTON & WILLIAMS,
Richmond, Virginia; Larry B. Sitton, Gregory G. Holland, Jonathan
P. Heyl, SMITH MOORE, L.L.P., Greensboro, North Carolina, for
Appellee Philip Morris USA, Incorporated.
OPINION
BRINKEMA, District Judge:
Appellants William Neese and Daniel Johnson, producers of burley
tobacco, seek to challenge the Secretary of Agriculture’s implementa-
tion of the Fair and Equitable Tobacco Reform Act of 2004
("FETRA"). The Act authorized the Secretary to offer buyout con-
tracts to tobacco producers who had previously operated under a fixed
quota system, which had been in place since the late 1930s. The Sec-
retary offered, and the appellants accepted, a series of contracts for
annual payments over the course of ten years. Appellants then
assigned those contracts, and all accompanying rights, to third parties
in exchange for a lump sum payment.
Invoking the Administrative Procedure Act, 5 U.S.C. § 702, appel-
lants contend that the Secretary improperly calculated their contract
payouts under FETRA and assert an entitlement to additional pay-
ments. The district court dismissed the complaint for lack of standing.
We agree and affirm. Appellants abandoned any right to challenge the
Secretary’s calculations when they assigned their buyout contracts to
third parties.
I.
Beginning in 1938, Congress tasked the Department of Agriculture
with controlling the production and price of tobacco. Tobacco produc-
NEESE v. JOHANNS 3
ers operated under a system of quotas and price supports, which lim-
ited the amount of tobacco that any one producer could grow and
market. Congress reversed course in 2004, passing the Fair and Equi-
table Tobacco Reform Act, Pub. L. No. 108-357, 118 Stat. 1521
("FETRA"). The statute ended the previous regulatory regime in favor
of a free-market approach.
As part of the transition to a free-market, FETRA directed the Sec-
retary of Agriculture to offer payment contracts to tobacco quota
holders and tobacco producers who had operated under the old sys-
tem. See 7 U.S.C. §§ 518a, 518b. Expenditures could not exceed
$10.14 billion.1 § 518f. Of that total, $9.6 billion was available for
disbursement — $6.7 billion to quota holders and $2.9 billion to pro-
ducers. See 70 Fed. Reg. 17,156-57.
The present litigation implicates the Secretary’s method of calcu-
lating payments to flue-cured and burley tobacco producers.2 Under
FETRA, an eligible producer’s baseline payment would be fixed by
the producer’s tobacco quota, in pounds, for the 2002 marketing year,
multiplied by $3.00. 7 U.S.C. §§ 518b(c)(2), (d)(1). The payment was
then subjected to two downward adjustments. First, the calculation
was reduced by one-third for each of the years between 2002 and
2004 in which the producer did not actually produce any tobacco.
§ 518b(d)(3). Second, where multiple producers came together to pro-
duce the same tobacco quota, FETRA directed the Secretary to pro-
vide "an equitable distribution among the persons of the contract
payments . . . based on relative share of such persons in the risk of
producing the quota tobacco and such other factors as the Secretary
considers appropriate." § 518b(b)(2).
1
The payments would be funded through assessments on tobacco man-
ufacturers and distributors and paid out over a ten year period. See 7
U.S.C. §§ 518b(d)(2), 518d.
2
A producer of quota tobacco is defined as any "owner, operator, land-
lord, tenant, or sharecropper that shared in the risk of producing tobacco
on a farm where tobacco was produced or considered planted pursuant
to a tobacco farm poundage quota . . . ." § 518(6). The terms "flue-cured"
and "burley" refer to the manner in which the tobacco is cured — either
by heat or by air.
4 NEESE v. JOHANNS
FETRA also directed the Secretary to promulgate implementing
regulations. § 519a. In an attempt to comply with the statute’s com-
mand of an "equitable distribution" across multiple producers of the
same tobacco quota, the Secretary adopted a rather complex method
to assess relative risk. First, the Secretary would calculate the base
quota level for each farm during the years 2002, 2003, and 2004.
Then, the 2003 and 2004 quotas were normalized to the 2002 quota
levels. Next, the Secretary ascertained the number of quota pounds for
which the particular producer bore the risk during each of the three
marketing years; and finally, the Secretary awarded $1 to the pro-
ducer for each eligible pound.3 See 7 C.F.R. § 1463.106; 70 Fed. Reg.
at 17,155. Put succinctly, the Secretary’s method of equitable alloca-
tion looked to each producer’s performance during the 2002, 2003,
and 2004 marketing years when dividing up the base quota level.
In a letter to the agency, dated April 19, 2005, appellant Neese
objected to this distribution scheme, arguing that a tobacco producer
who was active during the 2002, 2003, and 2004 marketing years was
entitled to $3.00 per pound multiplied only by his equitable share of
the 2002 quota. The agency dismissed that argument and notified him
that objections to general program and administrative provisions were
not administratively appealable. Neese did not pursue further admin-
istrative action to contest the formula, nor did he seek immediate judi-
cial intervention.
Under the Secretary’s regulations, an eligible tobacco producer
must have applied for a contract by June 15, 2005 in order to receive
his full payout. See 7 C.F.R. § 1463.108(c). Both Neese and Johnson
timely applied for payment contracts and the Secretary approved them
in August 2005.4 The contracts incorporated the Secretary’s regula-
3
The Commodity Credit Corporation ("CCC"), a corporation within
the Department of Agriculture, was tasked with the calculation and dis-
persal of payments.
4
The offer of a contract was conveyed by "Form CCC-956, Tobacco
Transition Producer Contract." Form CCC-956’s appendix states that the
document "shall be considered an offer to enter into a Tobacco Transi-
tion Payment Producer Contract on the terms specified on Form CCC-
956." The document "becomes effective when signed by the participant
and CCC."
NEESE v. JOHANNS 5
tions by reference and identified the producer’s adjusted base quota
level for each of the 2002, 2003, and 2004 marketing years. Neese’s
and Johnson’s contracts provided for payments totaling $189,793 and
$219,977, respectively. Altogether, the Secretary entered into over
183,000 contracts with tobacco producers totaling $2.87 billion in
payments — 99.2% of the program’s $2.9 billion limit.
On August 16, 2005, appellants filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of
themselves and all similarly situated flue-cured and burley tobacco
producers, arguing that the Secretary’s formula violated FETRA’s
payment provisions, resulting in their underpayment. Among other
relief, they requested class certification for all similarly situated
tobacco producers, a declaratory judgment that the Secretary’s regula-
tions are invalid, and an injunction ordering the Secretary to comply
with FETRA and enter into contracts with producers under the proper
payment formula.
FETRA allows those producers who do not want to receive pay-
ments over a ten year period to assign their contract payment to a
financial institution in exchange for a lump sum payment. See 7
U.S.C. § 518c(e); 7 C.F.R. § 1463.100(b). After initiating this civil
action, each appellant entered successor-in-interest contracts with a
third party to obtain an immediate lump sum payment — Neese with
Farm Bureau TTPP, LLC, on October 20, 2005, and Johnson with
Farm Credit of the Virginias FLCA on December 1, 2005. Each
successor-in-interest contract included the statement that the
successor-in-interest contract terminated "all rights of the Transferor
with respect to the Existing Contract," transferring them to the succes-
sor. See 7 C.F.R. § 1463.100(b) ("[A]ll rights and obligations of the
quota holder or producer, with respect to payments made by [the Sec-
retary] under this part, will be terminated and transferred to the suc-
cessor party.").
On January 23, 2006, the district court granted Philip Morris USA,
Inc.’s motion to intervene as of right.5 The parties thereafter filed
cross motions for summary judgment and Philip Morris USA moved
5
As a tobacco manufacturer, Philip Morris must pay quarterly assess-
ments to fund the payment contracts and, therefore, retains an interest in
the Secretary’s method of calculating payments.
6 NEESE v. JOHANNS
to dismiss the complaint for lack of standing. On September 28, 2006,
in a published opinion, the district court held that appellants lacked
standing to prosecute their suit: "plaintiffs cannot challenge the Secre-
tary’s formula separate and apart from a challenge to their producer
contracts, which they have transferred to third parties." Neese v.
Johanns, 450 F. Supp. 2d 632, 637 (W.D. Va. 2006). The district
court went on to hold that, even if appellants had standing, it would
not grant discretionary and equitable relief due to impracticability and
the resulting disruption to the buyout program. Id. at 638. Specifi-
cally, the district court observed that under appellants’ view of the
correct payment formula, a number of tobacco producers were over-
paid. Either they would have to disgorge payments or the Secretary
would have to levy an additional assessment on tobacco manufactur-
ers and importers. The court also held that much of that potential for
disruption to the program was due to appellants’ failure to "seek to
enjoin the Secretary from implementing his regulatory formula"; they
instead "entered into producer contracts[ ] and transferred their inter-
ests to third parties." Id.
Appellants filed a timely notice of appeal.
II.
The district court had jurisdiction over this action under 28 U.S.C.
§ 1331 and § 1337. We have jurisdiction to review the district court’s
ruling under 28 U.S.C. § 1291.
III.
We conduct a de novo review of the district court’s decision to dis-
miss for lack of standing. See Smith v. Frye, 488 F.3d 263, 272 (4th
Cir. 2007).
IV.
To have standing to bring this action, appellants must allege a "per-
sonal injury fairly traceable to the defendant’s allegedly unlawful
conduct and likely to be redressed by the requested relief." Allen v.
Wright, 468 U.S. 737, 751 (1984). To satisfy the injury-in-fact ele-
NEESE v. JOHANNS 7
ment, a plaintiff must demonstrate "an invasion of a legally protected
interest which is . . . concrete and particularized." Lujan v. Defenders
of Wildlife, 504 U.S. 555, 560 (1992).
In this case, any claim to a specific sum of money must flow from
the contractual relationship between the Secretary and the producer.
See 7 U.S.C. § 518b(a) ("The Secretary shall offer to enter into a con-
tract . . . under which the producer of quota tobacco shall be entitled
to receive payments under this section . . . .") (emphasis added).
Appellants, however, cannot maintain such a claim. After accepting
the Secretary’s offer of payment contracts without reservation and
entering into those contracts, they transferred all their rights under
those contracts to third parties. Quite simply, appellants have no
rights left to invoke and, therefore, lack standing to pursue further
contracts or payments from the Secretary.
AFFIRMED