Estoppel and the Affirmative Misconduct Requirement - Chien-Shih Wang v. Attorney General

Abstract

INTRODUCTION|Traditionally, the United States government has been immune from the doctrine of equitable estoppel. However, in recent years this view has given way to the sounder view that estoppel may lie against the government in the proper case. Determining the proper case, however, has not been an easy task. As a general rule, the doctrine of equitable estoppel precludes a party from maintaining a defense or a right that may have otherwise been available against one who reasonably relied to his detriment on the former's actions or misinformation. In order to invoke the defense of estoppel, four elements must be established: (1) The party to be estopped must know the facts; (2) he must intend that his conduct shall be acted on or must so act that the party asserting the estoppel has a right to believe it is so intended; (3) the latter must be ignorant of the true facts; and (4) he must rely on the former's conduct to his injury. In the United States, the traditional rule has been that estoppel cannot lie against the United States government. The underlying reason for the rule appears to stem from the early notion that "the King can do no wrong," which led to the doctrine of sovereign immunity in the United States. The principle seemed so firmly embedded that courts would apply it rather mechanically, without discerning any need for explanation or justification of its rationale. Early on, the Supreme Court has discarded the estoppel argument by simply...