Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/427/1/
Timestamp: 2018-08-15 12:48:34
Document Index: 40717691

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', 'art, 411', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', '§ 1983', '§ 1343', '§ 1346', '§ 1983', '§ 1', '§ 1983', '§ 6', '§ 1986', '§ 1983', '§ 1983']

Aldinger v. Howard :: 427 U.S. 1 (1976) :: Justia US Supreme Court Center
Justia › US Law › US Case Law › US Supreme Court › Volume 427 › Aldinger v. Howard
Held: A fair reading of the language used in § 1343(3), together with the scope of § 1983, under which counties are excluded from the "person[s] " answerable to the
REHNQUIST, J., delivered the opinion of the Court, in which BURGER, C.J., and STEWART, WHITE, POWELL, and STEVENS, JJ., joined. BRENNAN, J., filed a dissenting opinion, in which MARSHALL and BLACKMUN, JJ., joined, post, p. 427 U. S. 19.
This case presents the "subtle and complex question with far-reaching implications," alluded to but not answered in Moor v County of Alameda, 411 U. S. 693, 411 U. S. 715 (1973), and Philbrook v. Glodgett, 421 U. S. 707, 421 U. S. 720 (1975): whether the doctrine of pendent jurisdiction extends to confer jurisdiction over a party as to whom
the Civil Rights Act of 1871, 42 U.S.C. § 1983, [Footnote 2] that the discharge violated her substantive constitutional rights under the First, Ninth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and was procedurally defective under the latter's Due Process Clause. An injunction restraining the dismissal and damages for salary loss were sought against Howard, his wife, the named county commissioners, and the county. Jurisdiction over the federal claim was asserted under 28 U.S.C. § 1343(3), [Footnote 3] and pendent jurisdiction was alleged to lie over the "state law claims against the parties." As to the county, the state law
claim was laid to rest on state statutes waiving the county's sovereign immunity and providing for vicarious liability arising out of tortious conduct of its officials. 513 F.2d at 1358. The District Court dismissed the action as to the county on the ground that, since it was not suable as a "person" under § 1983, there was no independent basis of jurisdiction over the county, and thus "this court [has no] power to exercise pendent jurisdiction over the claims against Spokane County." From this final judgment, see Fed.Rule Civ.Proc. 54(b), petitioner appealed.
The Court of Appeals first rejected petitioner's claim that her § 1983 action against the county fell within the District Court's § 1343(3) jurisdiction, as obviously foreclosed by this Court's decisions in Moor, supra, and City of Kenosha v. Bruno, 412 U. S. 507 (1973). Turning to petitioner's pendent jurisdiction argument, the Court of Appeals noted, 513 F.2d at 1260, that the District Court had made no alternative ruling on the "suitability of this case for the discretionary exercise of pendent jurisdiction" under the second part of the rule enunciated in Mine Workers v. Gibbs, 383 U. S. 715, 383 U. S. 726-727 (1966). But since this Court in Moor had expressly left undisturbed the Ninth Circuit's refusal to apply pendent jurisdiction over a nonfederal party, the instant panel felt free to apply that rule as set out in Hymer v. Chai, 407 F.2d 136 (CA9 1969), and Moor v. Madigan, 458 F.2d 1217 (CA9 1972), aff'd in part, rev'd in part, 411 U. S. 693 (1973). This kind of case, the Court of Appeals reasoned, presented the "weakest rationale" for extension of Gibbs to pendent parties: (1) The state claims are pressed against a party who would otherwise not be in federal court; [Footnote 4] (2) diversity cases generally present more
In Osborn v. Bank of the United States, 9 Wheat. 738
(1824), Mr. Chief Justice Marshall, in his opinion for the Court, addressed the argument that the presence in a federal lawsuit of questions which were not dependent on the construction of a law of the United States prevented the federal court from exercising Art. III jurisdiction, even in a case in which the plaintiff had been authorized by Congress to sue in federal court. Noting that "[t]here is scarcely any case, every part of which depends" upon federal law, id. at 22 U. S. 820, the Chief Justice rejected the contention:
Id. at 213 U. S. 191. In Moore v. N.Y. Cotton Exchange, 270 U. S. 593, 270 U. S. 609-610 (1926),
In Gibbs, the respondent brought an action in federal court against petitioner UMW, asserting parallel claims -- a federal statutory claim and a claim under the common law of Tennessee -- arising out of alleged concerted union efforts to deprive him of contractual and employment relationships with the coal mine's owners. Though the federal claim was ultimately dismissed after trial, and though diversity was absent, the lower courts sustained jurisdiction over the state law claim and affirmed the damages award based thereon. Before reaching the merits (on which the lower courts were reversed), this Court addressed the argument that, under the rule of pendent jurisdiction as set out in Hurn v. Oursler, supra, at 289 U. S. 245-246, Gibbs had merely stated "two separate and distinct causes of action," as opposed to "two distinct grounds in support of a single cause of action," in which former case the federal court lacked the power to "retain and dispose" of the "non-federal cause of action." The Court stated that, since the Hurn test was formulated before the unification of law and equity by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, it was therefore unnecessarily tied to the outmoded concept of a "cause of
and it is in part upon this development -- and its relationship to Gibbs -- that petitioner relies to support "pendent party" jurisdiction here. Under this doctrine, the Court has identified certain considerations which justified the joining of parties with respect to whom there was no independent basis of federal jurisdiction. In Freeman v. Howe, 24 How. 450 (1861), the Court held that the state court had no jurisdiction over a replevin action brought by creditor claimants to property that had already been attached by the federal marshal in a federal diversity action. The claimants argued that a want of state court jurisdiction would leave them without a remedy, since diversity between them and the marshal was lacking. This Court stated that an equitable action in federal court by those claimants, seeking to prevent injustice in the diversity suit, would not have been "an original suit, but ancillary and dependent, supplementary merely to the original suit," and thus maintainable irrespective of diversity of citizenship. Id. at 65 U. S. 460. A similar approach was taken in Stewart v. Dunham, 115 U. S. 61 (1885), where, after a creditors' suit to set aside an allegedly fraudulent conveyance was removed to federal court on grounds of diversity, other nondiverse creditors were permitted to intervene to assert an identical interest. Since it was merely a matter of form whether the latter appeared as parties or came in later under a final decree to prove their claims before a master, the federal court
Id. at 115 U. S. 64. Dunham was, in turn, held controlling in Supreme Tribe of Ben-Hur v. Cauble, 255 U. S. 356 (1921). There, suing in diversity, out-of-state "Class A" members of an Indiana fraternal benefit society had sought a decree adjudicating their common interests in the control and disposition of
The decisional bridge between these two relatively discrete lines of cases appears to be this Court's decision in Moore. Since the defendant's nonfederal counterclaim in Moore arose out of the same transaction giving rise to the antitrust dispute between the parties, and federal jurisdiction was sustained over the former, the Court in Hurn, though faced with a plaintiff's assertion of pendent jurisdiction over an additional nonfederal claim, thought the two cases, "in principle, cannot be distinguished." Hurn, 289 U.S. at 289 U. S. 242. It was Hurn's "unnecessarily grudging" test of pendent jurisdiction, of course, which the Court expanded in Gibbs. On the other hand, because Moore was a suit in equity, the jurisdiction sustained there has been rationalized as falling under the umbrella of ancillary jurisdiction, [Footnote 8] though Moore neither used that term nor cited to Fulton Bank, supra. Petitioner thus suggests that, since Moore, read as an "ancillary" case, adopted a "transactional" test of jurisdiction quite similar to that set out in Gibbs, there is presently no "principled" distinction between the two doctrines. Since, under the Federal Rules, "joinder of claims, parties and remedies is strongly encouraged," Gibbs, 383 U.S. at 383 U. S. 724, her use of the Rules here is as a matter of jurisdictional power assertedly limited only by whether the claim against the county "derive[s] from a common nucleus of operative fact." Id. at 383 U. S. 725. Hence, petitioner concludes, based on Gibbs' treatment of pendent claims, and the use of ancillary jurisdiction to
Gibbs and its lineal ancestor, Osborn, were couched in terms of Art. III's grant of judicial power in "Cases . . . arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and [its] Treaties," since they (and implicitly the cases which linked them) represented inquiries into the scope of Art. III jurisdiction in litigation where the "common nucleus of operative fact" gave rise to nonfederal questions or claims between the parties. None of them posed the need for a further inquiry into the underlying statutory grant of federal jurisdiction or a flexible analysis of concepts such as "question," "claim," and "cause of action," because Congress had not addressed itself by statute to this matter. In short, Congress had said nothing about the scope of the word "Cases" in Art. III which would offer guidance on the
The situation with respect to the joining of a new party, however, strikes us as being both factually and legally different from the situation facing the Court in Gibbs and its predecessors. From a purely factual point of view, it is one thing to authorize two parties, already present in federal court by virtue of a case over which the court has jurisdiction, to litigate in addition to their federal claim a state law claim over which there is no independent basis of federal jurisdiction. But it is quite another thing to permit a plaintiff, who has asserted a claim against one defendant with respect to which there is federal jurisdiction, to join an entirely different defendant on the basis of a state law claim over which there is no independent basis of federal jurisdiction, simply because his claim against the first defendant and his claim against the second defendant "derive from a common nucleus of operative fact." Ibid. True, the same considerations of judicial economy would be served
There is also a significant legal difference. In Osborn and Gibbs, Congress was silent on the extent to which the defendant, already properly in federal court under a statute, might be called upon to answer nonfederal questions or claims; the way was thus left open for the Court to fashion its own rules under the general language of Art. III. But the extension of Gibbs to this kind of "pendent party" jurisdiction -- bringing in an additional defendant at the behest of the plaintiff -- presents rather different statutory jurisdictional considerations. Petitioner's contention that she should be entitled to sue Spokane County as a new third party, and then to try a wholly state law claim against the county, all of which would be "pendent" to her federal claim against respondent county treasurer, must be decided not in the context of congressional silence or tacit encouragement, but in
Congress has, in specific terms, conferred Art. III jurisdiction on the district courts to decide actions brought to redress deprivations of civil rights. Under the opening language of § 1343, [Footnote 9] those courts "shall have original jurisdiction of any civil action authorized by law to be commenced by any person . . ." (emphasis added). The civil rights action set out in § 1983 [Footnote 10] is, of course, included within the jurisdictional grant of subsection (3) of § 1343. Yet petitioner does not, and indeed could not, contest the fact that, as to § 1983, counties are excluded from the "person[s]" answerable to the plaintiff "in an action at law [or] suit in equity" to redress the enumerated deprivations. [Footnote 11] Petitioner must necessarily argue that, in spite of the language emphasized above, Congress left it open for the federal courts to fashion a jurisdictional doctrine under the general language of Art. III enabling them to circumvent this exclusion as long as the civil rights action and the state law claim arise from a "common nucleus of operative fact." But the question whether jurisdiction over the instant lawsuit extends not only to a related state law claim, but to the defendant against whom that claim is made, turns initially not on the general
Resolution of a claim of pendent party jurisdiction, therefore, calls for careful attention to the relevant statutory language. As we have indicated, we think a fair reading of the language used in § 1343, together with the scope of § 1983, requires a holding that the joinder of a municipal corporation, like the county here, for purposes of asserting a state law claim not within federal diversity jurisdiction, is without the statutory jurisdiction of the district court. [Footnote 12]
There are, of course, many variations in the language which Congress has employed to confer jurisdiction upon the federal courts, and we decide here only the issue of so-called "pendent party" jurisdiction with respect to a claim brought under §§ 1343(3) and 1983. Other statutory grants and other alignments of parties and claims might call for a different result. When the grant of jurisdiction to a federal court is exclusive, for example, as in the prosecution of tort claims against the United States under 28 U.S.C. § 1346, the argument of judicial economy and convenience can be coupled with the additional argument that only in a federal court may all of the claims be tried together. [Footnote 13] As we indicated at the outset of this opinion, the question of pendent party jurisdiction is "subtle and complex," and we believe that it would be as unwise as it would be unnecessary to lay down any sweeping pronouncement upon the existence or exercise of such jurisdiction. Two observations suffice for the disposition of the type of case before us. If the new party sought to be joined is not otherwise subject to federal jurisdiction, there is a more serious obstacle to the exercise of pendent jurisdiction than if parties already before the court are required to litigate a state law claim. Before it can be concluded that such jurisdiction exists, a federal court must satisfy itself not only that Art. III permits it, but that Congress in the statutes conferring jurisdiction has not expressly or by implication negated its existence.
Schulman v. Huck Finn, Inc., 472 F.2d 864, 866 (1973) (quoting 350 F.Supp. 853, 858 (Minn.1972)). In upholding an exercise of pendent party jurisdiction under Gibbs principles in that case, the Court of Appeals reaffirmed, 472 F.2d at 867, an earlier decision of that court by my Brother BLACKMUN, Hatridge v. Aetna Cas. & Surety Co., 415 F.2d 809 (1969). Therein, my Brother BLACKMUN, applying Gibbs principles in finding appropriate the exercise of federal pendent party jurisdiction, set forth an analysis with which I am in complete accord:
The Court today does not disclaim the applicability of Gibbs to the question of federal pendent party jurisdiction.
Our precedents, Monroe v. Pape, 365 U. S. 167 (1961), and Moor v. County of Alameda, supra, firmly establish that the sole rationale for construing the "persons" susceptible of liability under § 1983 as excluding local units of government lies in the legislative history of the so-called Sherman Amendment to the Act of April 20, 1871, § 1 of which enacted into law the first version of the present § 1983. [Footnote 2/4] The Senate approved one version of the Amendment proposed by Senator Sherman which would have expressly provided for local governmental liability, [Footnote 2/5] and the House rejected it. [Footnote 2/6] The Conference Committee reported another version, [Footnote 2/7] and the House rejected the Conference Report. [Footnote 2/8] Thereafter, the Senate acceded to the House rejection of the Sherman Amendment, and both Houses substituted in its place § 6 of the 1871 Act, the first version of the present 42 U.S.C. § 1986. [Footnote 2/9] The rejection of the Sherman Amendment, and nothing more, has been the basis upon which we have
In marked contrast in the legislative history of that proposed Amendment, however, is the absence of expression of hostility to federal judicial forums entertaining claims arising under state law. The opponents of the Sherman Amendment were, as the legislative history reveals, fully aware of several existing state laws respecting local government tort liability. [Footnote 2/11] Moreover, the opponents of the proposed Amendment, who consistently objected to the imposition of liability upon local governmental units as a matter of substantive federal law, also consistently expressed their views respecting the entertainment
Ibid. (remarks of Mr. Burchard) (emphasis supplied). [Footnote 2/12]
365 U.S. at 365 U. S. 180; id. at 193 (Harlan, J., concurring). Review of that same legislative history in Mitchum v. Foster, supra at 407 U. S. 238-242, [Footnote 2/14] led us to proclaim it
But by the announcement of its per se rule today, the Court undermines past teachings that the availability of a federal forum for claims brought pursuant to § 1983 is crucially important, and, in one fell swoop, erases the legislative
intent that those teachings reflect. [Footnote 2/15] After today, a suitor seeking redress in a federal forum under § 1983 and redress for the same wrongs under state law must split his case, and he is remitted to duplicative litigation no matter how expensive, wasteful, and needless. Regardless of the balance of the discretionary factors enunciated in Gibbs; regardless of the clarity of state law respecting the pendent claim against the local governmental unit, cf. Wechsler, Federal Jurisdiction and the Revision of the Judicial Code, 13 Law & Contemp.Prob. 216, 232-233 (1948); [Footnote 2/16] regardless of the absolute
identity of factual issues between the two claims, see Kates & Kouba, Liability of Public Entities Under Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act, 45 S.Cal.L.Rev. 131, 162-163 (1972); regardless of the monetary expense and other disadvantages of duplicate litigation, see Fortune, Pendent Jurisdiction -- The Problem of "Pendenting Parties," 34 U.Pitt.L.Rev. 1, 9 (1972); regardless of the waste of judicial time and the "travesty on sound judicial administration," supra at 427 U. S. 21, the Court, by its per se rule, forces upon a litigant the indefensible choice of either suffering the costs of duplicate litigation or forgoing his right, a right emphatically emphasized in the congressional policy, to a federal forum in which to be heard on his federal claim. To say that the suitor has available a state forum in which conveniently to litigate both his claims, ante at 427 U. S. 15, [Footnote 2/17] is patently to ignore the real issue, for it is painfully obvious that this does not result in a neutral choice by the suitor among available forums; rather, it imparts a fundamental bias against utilization of the federal forum owing to the deterrent effect imposed by the needless requirement of duplicate litigation if the federal forum is chosen. P. Bator, p. Mishkin, D. Shapiro & H. Wechsler, Hart and Wechsler's The Federal Courts and the Federal System 922-923 (2d ed.1973). Accordingly, rather than