Court Opinion

ID: 9446430
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:53:45.18065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:38.447696
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge
(concurring in the result).
This is an action at law for personal injuries and came into the federal court system solely because diversity of citizenship was pleaded. There can be little doubt that a New York state court applying its borrowing statute, N.Y.C.P.A. section 13, would have held, as did Judge Walsh, that the New Jersey two year statute of limitations barred the claim. The plain teaching of Guaranty Trust Co. of New York v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 65 S.Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079, that a federal court sitting in a diversity action should apply the same statute of limitations as would a state court, is, in my opinion, disregarded by the majority because of a desire to establish uniformity.
The uniformity established, however, I believe would simply make a confused situation more confounded. As conceded by the majority, the state statute is, in any event, the touchstone; all that the injection of laches accomplishes is to create an additional element of uncertainty.
Moreover, there is no need for establishing this uncertainty. Laches is not an integral part of maritime law. The rationale of Pope & Talbot, Inc., v. Hawn, 346 U.S. 406, 74 S.Ct. 202, 98 L.Ed. 143, in holding that contributory negligence was not a bar was the recognition of and deference to the universal application in admiralty of apportionment rules. Statutes of limitation, however, regulate many admiralty actions,1 including ones for personal injuries.2 Admiralty courts merely borrowed the device of laches from equity and applied it to some personal injury actions for want of a better and more explicit limitation.
The majority cites no case where laches has been used to govern an action at law. This is not surprising because such a doctrine, while easily administered by a court sitting as the trier of fact, in jury trials is apt to produce unjust, and in fact, non-uniform results. While the majority here obviates the jury trial requirement by, in effect, awarding summary judgment, the usual practice in this circuit3 as well as in *641others 4 is to have a full hearing on the issue of laches even where the analogous statute of limitations has run.
The effect of the majority decision will be to congest further the already overcrowded personal injury jury calendars. I would apply the state statute of limitations.

. E. g., petitions for limitation of liability, 46 U.S.C.A. § 185; salvage suits, 46 U.S.C.A. § 730; claims under the Carriage of Goods by Sea Act, 46 U.S.C.A. § 1303(6).

. Death on the High Seas Act, 46 U.S.C.A. § 763; the Suits in Admiralty Acts, 46 U.S.C.A. §§ 745, 782; the Jones Act, 46 U.S.C.A. § 688.

. The Fulton, 2 Cir., 1931, 54 F.2d 467; see Czaplicki v. The S.S. Hoegh Silvercloud, 351 U.S. 525, 533-534, 76 S.Ct. 946, 951, 100 L.Ed. 1387, reversing a finding by this court on the issue of laches since “there was never an opportunity for Czaplicki to introduce evidence to justify the delay.”

. McDaniel v. Gulf & South American Steamship Co., 5 Cir., 1955, 228 F.2d 189; Loverich v. Warner Co., 3 Cir., 1941, 118 F.2d 690.