Court Opinion

ID: 9419373
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:08.748011+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.742432
License: Public Domain

*576Me. Justice Black,
dissenting:
The petitioner is a soldier who was on duty in Washington throughout the course of the litigation in North Carolina of this action against him. He duly claimed the protection of the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act of 1940, and rests upon it here. I think he should prevail.
The relevant statutory provision before us may be summarized as follows: Actions brought against a person in military service shall be stayed upon application of that person “unless, in the opinion of the court,^ the ability of . . . the defendant to conduct his defense is not materially affected by reason of his military service.”
The statutory language has no legislative history and has not previously been interpreted by this Court. The elaborate legislative history set forth by the Court is a history of a clause which was stricken from the 1917 Act, which is not before us now, and which, on its face, has a meaning wholly different from the clause under construction.1 Hence the problem is a narrow one of analysis of the words of the statute itself.
I believe that the clause under consideration requires that an action against a person in military service must be *577stayed unless the trial judge concludes (a) that no personal judgment will result and that the action will in effect preserve the interests of all the parties for the duration of the war; or (b) that the defendant is only a formal party; or (c) that the defendant need not be present for any purpose, either before, during, or after the trial, and that he will be adequately represented and has no need to testify or participate in any way; or (d) that the defendant’s military service does not preclude him from having ample opportunity to get ready for, and to take his necessary part in, the litigation.
In my opinion, none of these conditions are'met here. Although the action began as a proceeding to preserve the trust estate, which was quite proper, it terminated with a personal judgment against the petitioner for $11,000 after a trial by jury of many disputed facts. The petitioner was obviously not merely a formal party. One issue in the case was whether he had dissipated trust funds, and for such an inquiry his presence to hear the evidence against him was essential to his interests and his own testimony was, in the words of the trial court, “highly desirable.”
The sole possible ground for the Court’s action, therefore, is that the defendant could have been present and, wilfully taking advantage of the Act, chose instead to absent himself. In reaching this result the Court engages in precisely the speculation which I think the Act prohibits. The Court does not know, and the state court did not try to find out, whether Boone applied for a leave or disclosed its urgency to his superiors; it concludes that he did neither. The Court does not know whether Boone attempted to find new counsel; it assumes that he did not. The Court does not know why Boone chose to participate in certain other law suits against him conducted simultaneously with this one; it assumes that the others were less important than this case. The Court can not know *578whether the petitioner truly owes the amount of the judgment against him; it must assume that he does because of a proceeding conducted against him in his absence.2
The Court emphasizes that Boone is a member of the bar. But, for the duration of the war, he is primarily a soldier, with a job to do which Congress intended should overshadow personal interests, whether his or those of others who seek a personal judgment against him. It is difficult for me to believe that he could adequately have prepared for this trial without a leave of many weeks. The purpose of the Act is to prevent soldiers and sailors from being harassed by civil litigation “in order to enable such persons to devote their entire energy to the defense needs of the Nation.” § 100. He is required to devote himself to serious business, and should not be asked either to attempt to convince his superior officers of the importance of his private affairs or to spend his time hunting for lawyers.
The trial court should, at the very least, have inquired of the appropriate military authorities whether the petitioner could be granted ample leave to prepare his defense and be present for trial. If the Act does not require this, it serves little purpose. It may be argued that this petitioner, a man of knowledge and experience, is as competent to ask his superior officer for leave as is the trial court; but the argument fails because the policy set here, no matter how many qualifications the Court tries to work into it, will shoot far beyond the confines of this case. In the course of the war, numerous actions will be brought against soldiers who have never heard of this Act and have no notion that this Court might want them to apply to *579their superior officers for leave and to make and file a formal record of their superior officers’ refusal.
I fear that today’s decision seriously limits the benefits Congress intended to provide in the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Civil Relief Act. It apparently gives the Act a liberal construction for the benefit of creditors rather than for the benefit of soldiers. It places in trial judges an enormous discretion to determine from a distance whether a person in military service has exercised proper diligence to secure a leave, or whether it is best for the national defense that he make no application at all. These are questions on which the judiciary has no competence, since only the military authorities can know the answers.

 The clause for which the Court gives the legislative history is as follows: An action against a person in military service shall be stayed, upon request, "unless, in the opinion of the court, the ability of the defendant to comply with the Judgment or order sought is not materially affected by reason of his military service.” This means, in rough substance, what its legislative history says, that the action was to„.be stayed except where the defendant could readily pay a judgment against himself. But that language was removed and the present provision inserted: the action upon proper request shall be stayed unless in the opinion of the trial judge, “the ability of the defendant to conduct his defense” is affected by military service. The difference between ability to pay a judgment and ability to conduct a defense is so great that the two clauses have substantially nothing in common. The ability to pay clause has been left in some sections of the Act, as, e. g., §§ 203,206, but it is not before us here.

 Had this been a judgment by default, Boone might have it set aside upon proper motion made at any time within “ninety days after the termination” of his military service. § 200 (4). Whether that section will permit Boone to attack this judgment after the war is a question which the Court expressly reserves.