Court Opinion

ID: 9419541
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:01.911273+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:18.807391
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
concurring.
I join in the per curiam on the assumption that after the Court of'Appeals will have disposed of all issues to be decided by local District of Columbia law nothing will be left in the certified question for this Court to answer.
This is a suit for a lawyer’s fee, that is, an ordinary District of Columbia common law action of debt and not one to enforce “a substantive right existing under the Constitution or laws of the United States.” For, I take it, in allowing an unincorporated association to be sued “in its common name for the purpose of enforcing . . . a substantive right existing under the . . . laws of the United States,” Rule 17 (b) of the Rules of Civil Procedure referred to laws of general applicability throughout the United States and not to the body of local law governing the District of Columbia. Therefore, suability of an unincorporated labor union is a local procedural problem to be determined, according to Rule 17 (b) in conjunction with Rule 81 (e), by the local law of the District. That “the suability of trades unions ... is after all in essence and principle merely a procedural matter” is vouched for by the Coronado case, 259 U. S. 344, 390, the scope of which has been authoritatively defined in Brown v. United States, 276 U. S. 134, 141 and Moffat Tunnel League v. United States, 289 U. S. 113, 118. Since substantive rights were outside the authority given by Congress for prescribing rules of civil procedure, Rule 17 (b) and the note thereto by the Advisory Committee on Rules, by dealing with capacity to sue or be sued, decisively confirm the *77statement in the Coronado case that the suability of a trade union is a procedural matter.
But if such a procedural matter may be cast in the form of a substantive issue for the determination of status, it would, in this case in any event, be a question of the substantive law of the District and not raise any substantive issue of federal law. If a suit like this were brought in the District Court for the Southern District of New York under diversity jurisdiction, no conceivable question other than that of the procedural or substantive law of the State of New York could arise. No federal question is infused into the litigation because such a local suit was brought in the District of Columbia.
In view of the increase in the volume and the complexity of the business that is coming to this Court, and the bearing of this increase upon the proper discharge of its work (see Ex parte Peru, 318 U. S. 578, 602-604), I deem it important to avoid any encouragement however slight to futile resort to this Court.