Wells v. Simonds Abrasive Company/Dissent Jackson

by Robert H. Jackson

United States Supreme Court

345 U.S. 514

Wells  v.  Simonds Abrasive Company

 Argued: Jan. 7, 1953. --- Decided: May 18, 1953

Mr. Justice JACKSON, with whom Mr. Justice BLACK and Mr. Justice MINTON join, dissenting.

We are unable to accept the results or follow the reasoning of the Court. Petitioner's decedent, a resident of Alabama, was killed in that State by a bursting emery wheel alleged to have been defective. It was manufactured by respondent, a Pennsylvania corporation. Finding it impossible to serve process on the defendant in Alabama, petitioner brought an action in the United States Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Her action was based on a statute of Alabama which conferred a right of action for wrongfully causing death and required that the action be brought within two years from the death. This she did, but her complaint was dismissed on the ground that, since the federal court was sitting in Pennsylvania, it was bound by the Pennsylvania statute of limitations of one year and, hence, that her action was barred. I believe the United States District Court, though sitting in Pennsylvania, should apply the law of Alabama, both as to liability and as to limitation.

The respondent relies upon the line of cases that began with Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188. A careful reading of the Erie decision will show that, so far as it applies at all, it is authority for the plaintiff's and not the defendant's position. The Erie injury occurred in Pennsylvania, but the action was brought in a United States District Court in New York. Although the trial court sat in New York, this Court held that it must decide liability by Pennsylvania law, that is, by the law of the state of injury, not that of the forum state, which holding, if applied here, would require that this case be adjudged by the law of Alabama even though it is brought in a federal court sitting in another state. That opinion, by Mr. Justice Brandeis, will be searched in vain for any hint that this result depended on the New York law of conflicts, which is not even paid the respect of mention. Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins held that there is no federal common law of torts and that federal courts must not improvise one of their own but must follow that state's law which is applicable to the case.

That the applicable state law was that of Pennsylvania, instead of that of the forum, was assumed without discussion of the reason because it was pursuant to what is probably the best-settled rule of conflicts in tort cases. It was stated by Mr. Justice Holmes, as follows: '* * * (I)t is established as the law of this court that when a person recovers in one jurisdiction for a tort committed in another he does so on the ground of an obligation incurred at the place of the tort that accompanies the person of the defendant elsewhere, and that is not only the ground but the measure of the maximum recovery.' Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Brown, 234 U.S. 542, 547, 34 S.Ct. 955, 956, 58 L.Ed. 1457. See also Slater v. Mexican National R. Co., 194 U.S. 120, 126, 24 S.Ct. 581, 582, 48 L.Ed. 900; Cardozo, J. in Loucks v. Standard Oil Co., 224 N.Y. 99, 120 N.E. 198. The existence and justice of this principle is recognized by its adoption as the policy of federal law. The Federal Tort Claims Act makes the basic test of the Government's liability whether a private person 'would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.' 60 Stat. 812, 843, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(b).

Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Mfg. Co., 313 U.S. 487, 61 S.Ct. 1020, 85 L.Ed. 1477, also cited by respondent, contains language that would seem to make all conflict questions depend on the law of the forum. But that was an action on contract in which conflict considerations prevail that are not present in tort cases. It is but dictum so far as it touches this statutory tort case.

Most of these decisions are actuated by a laudable but undiscriminating yen for uniformity within the forum state. Thus, 'Otherwise the accident of diversity of citizenship would constantly disturb equal administration of justice in coordinate state and federal courts sitting side by side.' Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Mfg. Co., supra, 313 U.S. at page 496, 61 S.Ct. at page 1021, citing the Erie case; and the Court's opinion here refers to it as a 'crucial factor' that 'the forum laid an uneven hand on causes of action arising within and without the forum state.'

But the essence of the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the Constitution is that uniformities other than just those within the state are to be observed in a federal system. The whole purpose and the only need for requiring full faith and credit to foreign law is that it does differ from that of the forum. But that disparity does not cause the type of evil aimed at in Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, supra, namely, that the same event may be judged by two different laws, depending upon whether a state court or a federal forum within that state is available. Application of the Full Faith and Credit Clause prevents this disparity by requiring that the law where the cause of action arose will follow the cause of action in whatever forum it is pursued.

The Court's decision, in contrast with our position, would enable shopping for favorable forums. Suppose this plaintiff might have obtained service of process in several different states-an assumption not extravagant in the case of many national corporations. Under the Court's holding, she could choose from as many varieties of law as of forums. Under our theory, wherever she elected to sue (if she had a choice), she would take Alabama law with her. Suppose even now she can get service in a state with no statute of limitations or a long one; can she thereby revive a cause of action that has expired under Alabama law? The Court's logic would so indicate. The life of her cause of action is then determined by the fortuitous circumstances that enable her to make service of process in a certain state or states.

Another very practical consideration indicates the unworkability of a doctrine for federal courts that the place of trial is the sole factor which determines the law of the case. 28 U.S.C. § 1404(a) authorizes certain transfers of any civil action from state to state for the convenience of witnesses or of parties, or in the interests of justice. The purpose was to adopt for federal courts the principles of forum non conveniens. Ex parte Collett, 337 U.S. 55, 69 S.Ct. 944, 93 L.Ed. 1207. These are broad and imprecise and involve such considerations as the state of the court's docket. Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 67 S.Ct. 839, 91 L.Ed. 1055. Are we then to understand that parties may get a change of law as a bonus for a change of venue? If the law of the forum in which the case is tried is to be the sole test of substantive law, burden of proof, contributory negligence, measure of damages, limitations, admission of evidence, conflict of laws and other doctrines, see Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99, at page 109, 65 S.Ct. 1464, at page 1469, 89 L.Ed. 2079, then shopping for a favorable law via the forum non conveniens route opens up possibilities of conflict, confusion and injustice greater than anything Swift v. Tyson, 16 Pet. 1, 10 L.Ed. 865, ever held.

This case is in United States Court, not by grace of Pennsylvania, but by authority of Congress, and what I said in First National Bank of Chicago v. United Air Lines, 342 U.S. 396, 398, 72 S.Ct. 421, 422, 96 L.Ed. 441, seems to me applicable here. I had supposed, before Hughes v. Fetter, 341 U.S. 609, 71 S.Ct. 980, 95 L.Ed. 1212, that the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania could close its courts to trial of this case. But no one would have questioned, I should think, that if the cause were entertained it must be tried in accordance with the law of the place of the wrong. Neither Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 65 S.Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079, nor Ragan v. Merchants Transfer & Warehouse Co., 337 U.S. 530, 69 S.Ct. 1233, 93 L.Ed. 1520, indicate to the contrary or have pertinence here, for in both cases the cause of action arose under the laws of the state of the forum and no conflict, or need to resort to foreign law, was present. They were issues between federal improvised law and settled state law.

Whether the principle of full faith and credit and of the law of conflicts will carry a general statute of limitations into the state of the forum along with the right is a more difficult question in the light of our precedents. McElmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 10 L.Ed. 177.

Early cases drew sharp distinction between rules of substantive law and rules of procedure. They classified statutes of limitations as procedural and hence excluded from the operation of the Full Faith and Credit Clause. This is not difficult to understand in the atmosphere of those times. Many state legislatures adopted comprehensive statutes of limitations applicable to equitable, common-law and statutory cases. Following the example of the early Field Code, the law of limitations not infrequently was incorporated into codes of procedure and thus was classified as procedural by the legislatures. In those days, federal courts were required to conform to local rules of procedure, although often independent of local substantive law under Swift v. Tyson, supra. Today that relationship is completely inverted. Federal procedure is not subservient to state law; substantive law is.

But, in Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, supra, this Court riddled the distinction between 'substantive' and 'procedural,' on which McElmoyle v. Cohen, supra, rests. Even as to general statutes of limitations recent decisions have bound the right and the limitation into a single bundle to be taken by the federal court as a whole. 'Since that cause of action is created by local law, the measure of it is to be found only in local law. It carries the same burden and is subject to the same defenses in the federal court as in the state court. * * * It accrues and comes to an end when local law so declares. * * *' Ragan v. Merchants Transfer & Warehouse Co., supra, 337 U.S. at page 533, 69 S.Ct. at page 1235, 93 L.Ed. 1520. We have also required that under some circumstances a forum must apply a foreign statute of limitations to a contract case. Order of United Commercial Travelers of America v. Wolfe, 331 U.S. 586, 67 S.Ct. 1355, 91 L.Ed. 1687.

But whatever may be the argument concerning general statutes of limitations as applied to common-law causes, this Court long ago recognized a distinction as to limitations on the action created by statutes in the pattern of the Lord Campbell Act. This Court early held such an action in federal court to be barred by the limitation contained in the applicable state statute. The reasoning of Mr. Chief Justice Waite is just as valid when it leads to a contrary result. For a unanimous Court, he wrote: '* * * The statutes create a new legal liability, with the right to a suit for its enforcement, provided the suit is brought within 12 months, and not otherwise. The time within which the suit must be brought operates as a limitation of the liability itself as created, and not of the remedy alone. * * * Time has been made of the essence of the right, and the right is lost if the time is disregarded. The liability and the remedy are created by the same statutes, and the limitations of the remedy are therefore to be treated as limitations of the right. * * *' The Harrisburg, 119 U.S. 199, 214, 7 S.Ct. 140, 147, 30 L.Ed. 358.

Subsequently, Mr. Justice Holmes twice wrote for the Court to the same effect. In Davis v. Mills, 194 U.S. 451, at page 454, 24 S.Ct. 692, 693, 48 L.Ed. 1067, he said:

'* * * But, as the source of the obligation is the foreign law, the defendant, generally speaking, is entitled to the benefit of whatever conditions and limitations the foreign law creates. Slater v. Mexican National Railroad, 194 U.S. 120, 24 S.Ct. 581 (48 L.Ed. 900). It is true that this general proposition is qualified by the fact that the ordinary limitations of actions are treated as laws of procedure, and as belonging to the lex fori, as affecting the remedy only, and not the right. But in cases where it has been possible to escape from that qualification by a reasonable distinction, courts have been willing to treat limitations of time as standing like other limitations, and cutting down the defendant's liability wherever he is sued. The common case is where a statute creates a new liability, and in the same section or in the same act limits the time within which it can be enforced, whether using words of condition or not. * * *'

And in Atlantic Coast Line R. Co. v. Burnette, 239 U.S. 199, at page 201, 36 S.Ct. 75, 76, 60 L.Ed. 226, he wrote:

'* * * But, irrespective of the fact that the act of Congress is paramount, when a law that is relied on as a source of an obligation in tort sets a limit to the existence of what it creates, other jurisdictions naturally have been disinclined to press the obligation farther. * * *'

In all three of these cases the benefit of this doctrine that the remedy is inseparable from the right accrued to defendants. But the validity of a doctrine does not depend on whose ox it gores. In Engel v. Davenport, 271 U.S. 33, 38, 46 S.Ct. 410, 412, 70 L.Ed. 813, this Court employed the same premise as to the unity of the right and the limitation to hold a plaintiff entitled to the longer period prescribed in federal legislation instead of the short statutory period of the forum state, saying of the limitation, 'This provision is one of substantive right, setting a limit to the existence of the obligation which the Act creates. * * * And it necessarily implies that the action may be maintained, as a substantive right, if commenced within the two years.'

The Supreme Court of Alabama has held the same doctrine applicable to the very statute in question, saying, 'This is not a statute of limitations, but of the essence of the cause of action, to be disclosed by averment and proof.' Parker v. Fies & Sons, 243 Ala. 348, 350, 10 So.2d 13, 15. The doctrine is well recognized in the literature of the law of conflicts.

The Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia in a well considered and documented opinion held that a federal court in the District trying an action brought under the Wrongful Death Act of Nebraska must apply the two-year limitation of the Nebraska Act and not the one-year limitation of the law of the forum. Judge Proctor, admitting 'considerable authority' to the contrary, said: 'However, there is a line of opposing authority which takes the view that as to rights of action of a purely statutory nature, such as the so-called wrongful death statutes, the time thereby prescribed for filing suit operates as a limitation of the liability itself as created by the statute, and not of the remedy alone. It is deemed to be a condition attached to the right to sue. As such, time has been made of the essence of the right, which is lost if the time is disregarded. The liability and the remedy being created by the same statute, limitation of the remedy must be treated as limitation of the right.' Lewis v. Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 85 U.S.App.D.C. 339, 177 F.2d 654, 655. Cf. Young v. United States, 87 U.S.App.D.C. 145, 184 F.2d 587, 21 A.L.R.2d 1458. See also Wilson v. Massengill, 6 Cir., 124 F.2d 666, certiorari denied 316 U.S. 686, 62 S.Ct. 1274, 86 L.Ed. 1758; Maki v. George R. Cooke Co., 6 Cir., 124 F.2d 663, 146 A.L.R. 1352, certiorari denied 316 U.S. 686, 62 S.Ct. 1274, 86 L.Ed. 1758.

We think that the better view of the case before us would be that it is Alabama law which giveth and only Alabama law that taketh away.

Notes