Court Opinion

ID: 9456316
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:48:45.183533+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:55.769500
License: Public Domain

WINTER, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring):
I concur in the judgment of the Court because I think that state law requires reversal and remand. We need not and should not decide more.
Following plaintiff’s petition for further reconsideration,' counsel have referred us to Weinstéin v. Glens Falls Insurance Co., 202 Va. 722, 119 S.E.2d 497 (1961), decided after Jones v. Morris Plan Bank of Portsmouth, 170 Va. 88, 195 S.E. 525 (1938), on which we relied for affirmance in our original decision. In Weinstein an action at law on a policy of insurance was commenced within the one year period of limitations for actions at law or in equity specified in the policy. The contractual period of limitations was required to be included in the policy by Virginia statute. Neither the statute nor the contract contained any provision for its tolling. During the course of the litigation, it became apparent that the court in which the action had been instituted was not competent to grant relief. To warrant recovery, reformation of the contract, an action cognizable solely in an equity court in Virginia, would be required. An action in equity was then instituted. It was filed before final disposition of the action at law but more than one year after the loss occurred. When the insurer contended that the equitable action was barred by limitations, the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals rejected the contention. It ruled that “the chancery suit was but a continuation of the claim asserted in the law action which was concededly brought in time, and the statute having stopped running upon the institution of the law action, the suit in chancery was not barred.” 119 S.E.2d at 503.
To me, Weinstein is dispositive of this appeal. Plaintiff’s suit was instituted in Kentucky before the expiration of *539two years prescribed by the applicable Virginia statute. The Kentucky court, bound by Kentucky’s ex post facto determination that Kentucky public policy prohibited giving effect to foreign statutes of limitations more liberal than that of Kentucky, was not competent to consider the merits of the suit. Plaintiff’s suit in Virginia was instituted before the Kentucky action was terminated. Indeed, suit was filed in the Western District of Virginia before the mandate of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit issued and more than six months before the Supreme Court denied certiorari. See Burnett v. New York Cent. R. Co., 380 U.S. 424, 435, 85 S.Ct. 1050, 13 L.Ed.2d 941 (1965). I have no difficulty in concluding that the Virginia suit was “but a continuation” of the previously filed Kentucky action, timely under Virginia law, and, therefore, the Virginia statute of limitations interposed no bar.
Inexplicably, the opinion in Weinstein made no reference to the earlier decision in Jones. We are told, also, that no reference to Jones was made in the briefs filed in Weinstein. Whatever our views with regard to conflict between the two decisions, Weinstein, as the latest expression of Virginia law, is entitled to be followed. Reconciliation, if any is needed, is for the state courts in an appropriate ease, not us.
We ought not to decide more than that the present suit is not barred by limitations under Virginia law. The parties have agreed that, under Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99, 65 S. Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079 (1945), we must look to the law of Virginia to decide this case. Guaranty Trust held that, in a diversity action like that at bar, we must look to the state law to determine the period of limitations. The court purportedly accepts this proposition, but seeks to avoid its logical consequences by finding that the tolling of limitations is a matter of federal law. While Guaranty Trust did not concern the tolling of limitations, tolling is so clearly the obverse of the same coin that I think we are bound to Virginia law and are foreclosed from fashioning a federal rule.
Certainly, Guaranty Trust has not been sufficiently eroded in whole or in part that we should refuse to follow it; nor, in my estimation, has a satisfactory way been devised by the court to avoid it. The decisions of the Supreme Court in Byrd y. Blue Ridge Cooperative, 356 U.S. 525, 78 S.Ct. 893, 2 L.Ed.2d 953 (1958), and Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460, 85 S.Ct. 1136, 14 L.Ed.2d 8 (1965), do provide a basis for applying a federal rule of law in a diversity case under certain circumstances, but the rationale of those two cases does not support a further departure from the principles of Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188 (1938), under the facts presented here. Byrd (factual issue must be decided by a jury in a federal court) and Hanna (service of process in federal actions must meet the standards of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure) were dictated by strong expressions of federal policy; the Seventh Amendment and the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, respectively. In contrast to these Constitutional and Congressional mandates, here we have only a notion of an “institutional interest” in the uniform management of the federal court system. If this interest is sufficient to support a federal rule of tolling, I suggest that it favors the application of a federal statute of limitations just as strongly, so that by implication Guaranty Trust is being overruled. I note, also, that there is lacking in this case any discriminatory state policy of the type intended to be prevented by the creation of federal diversity jurisdiction so that there would be justification for noncompliance with state law. Szantay v. Beech Aircraft Corp., 349 F.2d 60 (4 Cir. 1965).
To me, it is, therefore, unwise to impugn the vitality and scope of Guaranty Trust when the law of Virginia alone provides the result.
Circuit Judge SOBELOFF authorizes me to say that he joins in this opinion.