Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/100281/link-vs-wabash-r-co
Timestamp: 2019-04-25 14:34:36+00:00

Document:
Held: the judgment is affirmed. Pp. 370 U. S. 627 -636.
(a) The long recognized inherent power of Federal District Courts, acting on their own initiative, to dismiss cases that have remained dormant because of the inaction or dilatoriness of the parties seeking relief has not been restricted by Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 41(b) to cases in which the defendant moves for dismissal. Pp. 370 U. S. 629 -632.
(b) The circumstances here were such as to dispense with the necessity for advance notice and hearing before dismissing the case. Pp. 370 U. S. 632 -633.
(c) Petitioner was bound by his lawyer's conduct on the basis of which the action was dismissed. Pp. 370 U. S. 633 -634.
(d) On the record in this case, it cannot be said that the District Court's dismissal of this action for failure to prosecute amounted to an abuse of discretion. Pp. 370 U. S. 633 -636.
Anderson National Bank v. Luckett, 321 U. S. 233 , 321 U. S. 246 . But this does not mean that every order entered without notice and a preliminary adversary hearing offends due process. The adequacy of notice and hearing respecting proceedings that may affect a party's rights turns, to a considerable extent, on the knowledge which the circumstances show such party may be taken to have of the consequences of his own conduct. The circumstances here were such as to dispense with the necessity for advance notice and hearing.
On this record, we are unable to say that the District Court's dismissal of this action for failure to prosecute, as evidenced only partly by the failure of petitioner's counsel to appear at a duly scheduled pretrial conference, amounted to an abuse of discretion. It was certainly within the bounds of permissible discretion for the court to conclude that the telephone excuse offered by petitioner's counsel was inadequate to explain his failure to attend. And it could reasonably be inferred from his absence, as well as from the drawn-out history of the litigation ( see note 2 supra ), [ Footnote 9 ] that petitioner had been deliberately proceeding in dilatory fashion.
Finally, this is not a case in which failure to comply with a court order "was due to inability fostered neither by . . . [petitioner's] own conduct nor by circumstances within its control." Societe Internationale Pour Participations Industrielles Et Commercials, S.A. v. Rogers, 357 U. S. 197 , 357 U. S. 211 . Petitioner's counsel received due notice of the scheduling of the pretrial conference, and cannot now be heard to say that he could not have foreseen the consequences of his own default in attendance.
Even if the judgment of the Court of Appeals rested on the ground that counsel's "failure" to attend the pretrial conference sufficed by itself to justify the dismissal, it is our duty, without reaching the broader question, to sustain the District Court on its narrower holding if, as we decide, that holding was correct. E.g., Walling v. General Industries Co., 330 U. S. 545 , 330 U. S. 547 ; Langnes v. Green, 282 U. S. 531 , 282 U. S. 536 -537; United States v. American Railway Express Co., 265 U. S. 425 , 265 U. S. 435 -436; see Securities & Exchange Comm'n v. Chenery Corp., 318 U. S. 80 , 318 U. S. 88 .
"The order now affirmed has inflicted a serious injury upon an injured man and his family, who are innocent of any wrongdoing. Plaintiff's cause of action . . . was his property. It has been destroyed. The district court, to punish a lawyer, has confiscated another's property without process of law, which offends the constitution. A district court does not lack disciplinary authority over an attorney, and there is no justification, moral or legal, for its punishment of an innocent litigant for the personal conduct of his counsel. Because it was neither necessary nor proper to visit the sin of the lawyer upon his client, I would reverse. [ Footnote 2/2 ]"
"This is an appeal by plaintiff from an order of the district court entered October 12, 1960 dismissing this cause of action for failure of plaintiff's counsel to appear in court for a pretrial conference scheduled for hearing on that date. [ Footnote 2/4 ]"
"Defendant's counsel makes no effort to rely upon want of prosecution as a ground for the involuntary dismissal. Obviously defendant is in no position to make such a contention, inasmuch as it caused the district court to vacate the order setting the case for trial on July 22, 1959, and continue the case. [ Footnote 2/7 ]"
or his lawyer was responsible for the first three years of delay in the trial of the case. If responsibility is to be placed upon anyone for that delay, it must be placed upon the lawyers for the defendant and upon the trial judge. One month after the lawsuit was filed, the defendant appeared and answered the complaint. Some months later, the defendant filed a motion for judgment on the pleadings, arguing that the complaint failed to state a cause of action. On November 30, 1955, more than a year after the case was filed, the district judge granted the motion for judgment on the pleadings and entered his first dismissal of the case. On October 10, 1956, however, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, in an opinion by Judge Schnackenberg, reversed this dismissal and remanded the case for trial. [ Footnote 2/8 ] The railroad then asked this Court to grant certiorari and review the Court of Appeals' holding but, on February 25, 1957, we denied certiorari. [ Footnote 2/9 ] At this stage, the case had been delayed for almost three years by an erroneous ruling of the trial judge made at the instance of the defendant's lawyers.
conference at which petitioner's lawyer failed to appear. But even that failure showed no inclination on the part of the plaintiff or his lawyer to abandon the lawsuit, for the lawyer called the clerk of the District Court over long-distance telephone and also talked to the trial judge's secretary on the morning of the day of the conference to explain why he could not be present on October 12 and to urge that the pretrial conference be passed over to the next day, October 13, to give him a chance to be present. It is true that the trial judge later refused to accept the lawyer's explanation, and this ruling, if correct, indicates that the lawyer may have been guilty of some kind of breach of his responsibility to his client and to the court. It does not indicate, however, and it cannot by any stretch of the imagination be made to indicate, that the lawyer, much less the plaintiff himself, was acting in the way people do who let their lawsuits die for "want of prosecution." The record shows that neither the lawyer nor the plaintiff himself was given any sort of notice by the judge or by his secretary that the request for a one-day postponement would be denied, even though the defendant's request for indefinite postponement had been granted only three months earlier. Nor did the lawyer or the plaintiff receive any notice that a failure to appear at the pretrial conference would result in the drastic sanction of dismissal of the case. [ Footnote 2/10 ] And I think that nothing short of clairvoyance would have enabled either of them to anticipate that this Court, or any court, would approve dismissal of the case for "want of prosecution."
"Petitioner voluntarily chose this attorney as his representative in the action, and he cannot now avoid the consequences of the acts or omissions of this freely selected agent. [ Footnote 2/11 ]"
I am not quite able to understand the Court's suggestion that "keeping this suit alive . . . would be visiting the sins of plaintiff's lawyer upon the defendant. " I do not see how it can be regarded as a punishment to compel a person to try his lawsuit on its merits before an impartial judicial tribunal established under and operating in accordance with the Constitution of the United States.

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