Court Opinion

ID: 9446215
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:49:14.684144+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:34.171340
License: Public Domain

HARTIGAN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I am constrained to disagree with the majority decision of the court because I believe it is based on two lines of reasoning which are essentially- unsupported by precedent and contrary to the language of the Rhode Island statute in question.
The first theory is that allowing the defendant to implead his subcontractor in order to receive contribution even though no payment has been made by the defendant toward the discharge of their common liability does not reach a result contrary to that which would have been reached in the state court had diversity of citizenship not been present. It is doubtful to me that the Rhode Island courts would entertain an action for money damages to which a plaintiff in the shoes of the third party plaintiff in the instant case would be entitled to only when and if he had “by payment discharged the common liability or (had) paid more than his pro rata share thereof” and if as the record shows in the instant case no payment whatsoever has been made by the third party plaintiff. It is true that this statute casts a heavy burden upon the joint tortfeasor who is unlucky enough to have been chosen by the injured party as the object of his legal action, but this statute is a legislative determination, the wisdom of which it is not our function to question in the absence of any challenge to its constitutionality.
Assuming that the allowance of this third party procedure results in a difference in the ultimate outcome of the litigation in the federal court as contrasted with the Rhode Island court, the majority decides that because of the promulgation of Rule 14 of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, the allowance of the defendant’s third parly action is a matter of procedure. The decision of the Supreme Court in the Ragan case which also involved a rule of \ ivil procedure is said to be limited to its own special fact situation. In my opinion, however, the principles enunciated th erein are f ully applicable to the instant case. The third party plaintiff’s cause of action was created by local law and “the measure of it is to be found only in local law.” Ragan v. Merchants Transfer Co., 1949, 337 U.S. 530, 533, 69 S.Ct. 1233, 1237, 93 L.Ed. 1520. I am forced to conclude that because the defendant had no cause of action against the third party defendant in the Rhode Island courts, he should not have one in the District Court of the United States for the District of Rhode Island in a diversity case merely because of the existence of a federal rule of procedure allowing the impleading of a third party who is or may be liable to the impleader. Certainly if it is assumed that in the Rhode Island courts the joint tortfeasor has no cause of action until he has paid more than his pro rata share of the common liability, the allowance of this impleader prior to such payment and the resultant prevention of the running of the statute of limitations enhances the substantive rights of the original defendant over what is given by state law.
The policy of avoiding the disregard of State law in diversity cases in the federal courts must be kept free from the “entanglements with analytical or terminological niceties” which I believe basically underlie the majority opinion. See Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 1945, 326 U.S. 99, 110, 65 S.Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079.