Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/345/379
Timestamp: 2015-11-25 00:53:13
Document Index: 304624534

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 1257', '§ 1257', '§ 1257', '§ 6', '§ 1404', '§ 1404', '§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 1404', '§ 1404', '§ 6', '§ 6', '§ 1404', '§ 1404', '§ 1404', '§ 56', 'art 2', '§ 1404']

POPE et al. v. ATLANTIC COAST LINE R. CO. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
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345 U.S. 379 (73 S.Ct. 749, 97 L.Ed. 1094)
Argued: Jan. 16, 1953.
[HTML] See 76 S.E.2d 399.
petitioner sued his employer, an interstate railroad company, for injuries sustained during the course of his employment, allegedly through respondent's negligence. The injury occurred in Ben Hill County, Georgia, which was the place of petitioner's employment as well as the place of his residence. But petitioner filed his complaint in the Circuit Court of Jefferson County, Alabama; jurisdiction and venue were grounded on § 6 of the Act.
The trial court sustained a general demurrer to this petition. The Georgia Supreme Court reversedholding that Georgia law provided Georgia courts with the power to enjoin Georgia residents from bringing vexatious suits in foreign jurisdictions. Petitioner's claim that § 6 of the Federal Employers' Liability Act prohibited such an injunction in this case was overruled. 209 Ga. 187, 71 S.E.2d 243. We granted certiorari, 344 U.S. 863, 73 S.Ct. 107, for the decision had interpreted an important federal statute, and the interpretation was asserted to be in conflict with decisions of this Court in Miles v. Illinois Central R. Co., 1942, 315 U.S. 698, 62 S.Ct. 827, 86 L.Ed. 1129, and Baltimore & O.R. Co. v. Kepner, 1941, 314 U.S. 44, 62 S.Ct. 6, 86 L.Ed. 28.
In our grant of certiorari, we also directed counsel to brief and argue the question of whether the judgment of the Georgia Supreme Court was 'final.' The statute which vests us with jurisdiction to review the decisions of state courts provides that the judgment must come from the 'highest court of a State in which a decision could be had,' and it must be 'final.' 28 U.S.C. 1257, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1257. The case at bar clearly met the first requirement, but we were in doubt as to whether it satisfied the second.
Congress has limited our power to review judgments from state courts lest the Court's jurisdiction be exercised in piecemeal proceedings to render advisory opinions. Were our reviewing power not limited to 'final' judgments, litigants would be free to come here and seek a decision on federal questions which, after later proceedings, might subsequently prove to be unnecessary and irrelevant to a complete disposition of the litigation.
is not a 'final' judgment.
Yet we are not bound to determine the presence or absence of finality from a mere examination of the 'face of the judgment.'
We have not interpreted § 1257 so as to preclude review of federal questions which are in fact ripe for adjudication when tested against the policy of § 1257.
The finality problem arises in this case because the judgment of the Georgia Supreme Court did not, on its face, end the litigation. Both parties agree that Georgia procedure would permit petitioner to return to the Superior Court of Ben Hill County and interpose some other defense to respondent's suit for an injunction. But petitioner has no other defense to interpose. He has been both explicit and free with his concession that his case rests upon his federal claim and nothing more. If the court below decided that claim correctly, then nothing remains to be done but the mechanical entry of judgment by the trial court. Thus, as the case comes to us, the federal question is the controlling question; 'there is nothing more to be decided.'
Under these particular circumstances, we have jurisdiction over the cause, Richfield Oil Corp. v. State Board of Equalization, 1946, 329 U.S. 69, 67 S.Ct. 156, 91 L.Ed. 80, and we reach the merits of petitioner's contention that the Georgia Supreme Court has failed to give proper effect to the venue provisions of the Federal Employers' Liability Act.
Section 6 of that Act establishes petitioner's right to sue in Alabama. It provides that the employee may bring his suit wherever the carrier 'shall be doing business', and admittedly respondent does business in Jefferson County, Alabama. Congress has deliberately chosen to give petitioner a transitory cause of action; and we have held before, in a case indistinguishable from this one, that § 6 displaces the traditional 'power of a state court to enjoin its citizens, on the ground of oppressiveness * * * from suing * * * in the * * * courts of another state * * *.' Miles v. Illinois Central R. Co., supra, 315 U.S. at page 699, 62 S.Ct. at page 828. Respondent admits that the Miles case dealt with precisely the issue before us, but respondent tells us that Miles is now no longer the law because Congress overruled it, by implication, with the passage of § 1404(a) of the Judicial Code in 1948.
The reference to the Kepner case in the Reviser's Note in nowise conflicts with what we think is the plain meaning of the language of § 1404(a) itself. The Kepner case was simply cited as an apt example of an inequitable situation which could be cured by providing the federal courts with the power to transfer an action on grounds of forum non conveniens. The full text of the Reviser's Note
makes it clear that it was the power of the federal court to transfer, and not the power of the state court to enjoin, which was the remedy envisioned for any injustice wronght by § 6 in the Kepner case.
This proposed amendmentthe Jennings Bill
focused Congress' attention on the decisions of this Court in both the Miles and the Kepner cases. The broad questioninvolving many policy considerationsof whether venue should be more narrowly restricted, was reopened; cogent argumentsboth pro and conwere restated. Proponents of the amendment asserted that, as a result of the Miles and Kepner decisions, injured employees were left free to abuse their venue rights under § 6 and 'harass' their employers in distant forums without restriction. They insisted that these abuses be curtailed.
These arguments prevailed in the House which passed the Jennings Bill,
but the proposed amendment died in the Senate Judiciary Committee, and § 6 of the Federal Employers' Liability Act was left just as this Court had construed it.
The Court found in those two cases that Congress, by § 6 of the Federal Employers' Liability Act, had given plaintiffs unrestrainable freedom in the choice of a forum among the courts State and federalwhich were authorized to entertain actions under the Act. Following the decisions in Kepner and Miles, Congress enacted § 1404(a), permitting the transfer of 'any civil action' from one federal district court to another. The rationale of Kepner and Miles foreclosed, so we had indicated, the possibility of such a transfer in Federal Employers' Liability cases. See Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert, 330 U.S. 501, 505, 67 S.Ct. 839, 841, 91 L.Ed. 1055. In Ex parte Collett, 337 U.S. 55, 69 S.Ct. 944, 959, 93 L.Ed. 1207, we held that § 1404(a) had removed the barrier of the Kepner and Miles decisions and made the doctrine of forum non conveniens applicable to cases arising in the federal courts under the Federal Employers' Liability Act as well as to the generality of cases. Congress, we said, naturally enough, had not repealed § 6, which Kepner and Miles construed, but had removed the 'judicial gloss' represented by the Court's opinions in those two cases. 337 U.S. at page 61, 69 S.Ct. at page 947.
Legislation was read in this hostile spirit in the mid-Victorian days when it was regarded, in the main, as wilful and arbitrary interference with the harmony of the common law and with its rational unfolding by judges. This is an attitude that treats words as ends and not as vehicles to convey meaning. One had supposed that this niggardly view of the function of legislation had long since become outmoded. Statutes, even as decisions, are not to be deemed self-enclosed instances; they are to be regarded as starting points of reasoning, as means for securing coherence and for effectuating purpose. See Landis, Statutes and the Sources of Law, Harvard Legal Essays 213246.
Section 1404(a) expresses a policy with respect to the enforcement of the Federal Employers' Liability Act; a policy, as the Reviser's Notes were astute to indicate, contrary to that represented by Kepner, and its offspring, Miles.
It is more than difficult to assume that Congress aimed at the result which this Court reached in the Collett case, and at the same time desired the result of Miles and of Kepner to continue to be law. Not to reject such an assumption is to attribute to Congress a disregard of the desirability of uniformity in the administration of the Federal Employers' Liability Act; more than that, it is to attribute to Congress a wish to create what may fairly be called, as we shall see, capricious and whimsical results.
The problem of avoiding abuse of the judicial process is not one that arises only in actions under the Federal Employers' Liability Act in the federal courts. Indeed, most of the actions under that Act are brought in the State courts. There is no rhyme or reason in assuming that Congress was eager to shut off abuses in the federal courts but forbade their prevention by State courts.
Congress dealt specifically with the abuses in the federal courts since, in Title 28, it was addressing itself to federal courts. But the central fact is that Congress was formulating a policy. To disregard the natural implications of a statute and to imprison our reading of it in the shell of the mere words is to commit the cardinal sin in statutory construction, blind literalness.
The doctrine enunciated by Kepner and Miles at least made for uniformity in the operation of § 6, in that those cases treated the grant of authority to State and federal courts to entertain Federal Employers' Liability actions as the grant of an unqualified right to plaintiffs, indefeasible regardless of the interests of justice affected in its exercise.
Now, under § 1404(a), federal courts may freely apply, and do apply, the doctrine of forum non conveniens to Federal Employers' Liability cases. Ex parte Collett, supra. So may State courts. Southern R. Co. v. Mayfield, 340 U.S. 1, 71 S.Ct. 1, 95 L.Ed. 3. Alabama is one of a minority of the States which has ruled that it will not recognize the doctrine of forum non conveniens. See Barrett, The Doctrine of Forum non Conveniens, 35 Calif.L.Rev. 380, at 388, n. 40. Only if he Brings his action in a court of one of these States can a plaintiff be sure, under today's decision, that no matter how unjustifiable his choice, the forum in which the action is brought will be the forum in which it is tried. The sole effect of our adherence to Kepner-Miles now is the creation of a haven in which the choice of a harassing forum, an activity which Congress has condemned in § 1404(a) and which therefore we no longer ought to regard as legitimate, may be carried on by virtue of our 'judicial gloss,' although it would not be tolerated in other courts in the United States, including those over which we have supervising authority.
See Radio Station WOW v. Johnson, 1945, 326 U.S. 120, 123 124, 65 S.Ct. 1475, 14771478, 89 L.Ed. 2092; Gospel Army v. City of Los Angeles, 1947, 331 U.S. 543, 67 S.Ct. 1428, 91 L.Ed. 1662. Cf. Herb v. Pitcairn, 1945, 324 U.S. 117, 125126, 65 S.Ct. 459, 462463, 89 L.Ed. 789.
28 U.S.C. 1404(a), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1404(a).
Ex parte Collett, supra, 337 U.S., at pages 6570, 69 S.Ct. at pages 949952.
See H.R.Rep.No.613, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947); Hearings before Subcommittee No. 4 of the House Committee on the Judiciary on H.R. 1639, 80th Cong., 1st Sess. (1947); Hearings before a Subcommittee of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary on S. 1567 and H.R. 1639, 80th Cong., 2d Sess. (1948). The Jennings Bill was debated extensively on the floor of the House. See 93 Cong.Rec. 91789193.
See Ex parte Collett, supra, 337 U.S., at pages 6265, 69 S.Ct. at pages 948950.
eral Employers' Liability Act by removing from section 6 (
45 U.S.C. 56 (45 U.S.C.A. § 56)) the provision permitting actions to be brought in a district court of the United States, in the district of the residence of the defendant, or in which the cause of action arose, or in which the defendant shall be doing business at the time of commencing such action.' The bill proposed as well to amend 'the Judicial Code by adding a new paragraph to section 51 (
28 U.S.C. 112) to provide the venue in any action brought against interstate common carriers by railroad for damages resulting from wrongful death or personal injuries.' H.R.Rep.No.613, 80th Cong., 1st Sess., at p. 2. In both actions under the Federal Employers' Liability Act and the other specified actions against railroads, the Jennings Bill would have permitted suit only in the district or county in which the plaintiff resided or the accident occurred. No doubt the abuses which are curable by discretionary dismissals under the doctrine of forum non conveniens or, as in this case, by means of an injunction, could be cured also in the manner of the Jennings Bill. But the difference between the two methods of attack is quite plain. The Jennings Bill represented a meat-ax approach and was opposed on precisely that ground by the minority in the House Committee on the Judiciary. The minority pointed out that the evil of 'trafficking in, and solicitation of, lawsuits' originated with our Kepner and Miles decisions. The minority's aim was to have lawsuits 'moved around for the convenience of witnesses and for other purposes in accordance with the provisions of the State laws' rather than be governed by the inflexible venue provisions of the Jennings Bill. Id., at Part 2, pp. 34. If a congressional policy can be derived from rejection of the Jennings Bill, it is a policy which coincides with that expressed in the Reviser's Note to § 1404(a), the policy, that is, which the Court disregards.