Court Opinion

ID: 9450419
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 16:46:54.445229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:18.618770
License: Public Domain

WISDOM, Circuit Judge
(concurring) :
I concur in the result reached by the Court and in that portion of the Court’s opinion relating to the first two questions the appellant presented for decision. However, I would decide the third question. I would hold that malapportionment of a part of the House of Representatives of the 87th Congress does not have the effect of nullifying legislation enacted by a Congress that is otherwise both a de facto and de jure legislative body. Texas v. White, 1869, 7 Wall. 700, 74 U.S. 700, 19 L.Ed. 227.
Failure of this Court to consider the appellant’s third contention will not cause the Halls of Justice to fall or even to shake a little bit. There is just not enough merit to the argument. At stake, however, is an important principle. Judge Hutcheson, for the court, put it in these words:
“[W]here, as here, the case below was tried, not upon any misapprehension of the facts, but upon a misapprehension of the effect of those facts in law, appellant may not be prevented from pressing here for the application, to the proven facts, of the correct principles of law. Especially may it not be where, as here, these principles seem to have undergone a change, or at least, to have been differently stated and applied since the trial of the case below. To hold otherwise would be contrary, we think, to the plainest principles of justice.” Associated Indemnity Corporation v. Scott, 5 Cir. 1939, 103 F.2d 203, 209.
See also Commissioner v. Chase Manhattan, 5 Cir. 1958, 259 F.2d 231, 239. *93And, be it remembered, the first bomb to score a direct hit on Swift v. Tyson, 16 Pet. 1, 10 L.Ed. 865 was dropped during oral argument before the Supreme Court in Erie v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188.
I would allow either party on appeal to advance a new theory or to change his theory of the case — if: (1) all the relevant evidence is before the Court, (2) the opposing party has had adequate time to brief the point, and (3) the opposing party is not prejudicial by not having introduced evidence below that would have militated against the validity or effect of the new theory. The first and greatest of the rules is that we are a Court “to secure the just * * determination of every action.” F.R.Civ.P. 1.