Court Opinion

ID: 9446188
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:48:53.70196+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:33.848368
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) .
To the reasons set forth in the Court’s original opinion, 251 F.2d 583, I would add as the basis of my dissent a few comments.
The Court’s decision is changed not for the reasons set forth by my Brother Rives in his original dissent, 251 F.2d 583, at page 588 — it is changed because qf the rule of sovereign immunity.
The rule of sovereign immunity is one which had its origin in a different day. It is, I believe, now thoroughly outmoded and despite the efforts of the logicians to make it appear just or wise, it is looked upon as an anachronism typical of the feudal monarchial society which gave it birth.
While in diversity litigation we are duty bound faithfully to search out and then apply state law, including a local rule of sovereign immunity, we ought not to apply it to new situations unless the tide of local analogous law is simply too much to stem. When faced with this problem, it is no simple answer to say that if the principle is unsound, it is for the legislature to make the change. As distasteful as it may be to conceptual purists to acknowledge a legislative consequence in adjudication, the fact remains that decision-making is actually legislating, at least in the sense of applying or extending an old principle to a new situation.
That is precisely what is really done here. For all concede that the problem here presented is new to Florida, and whichever way we turn, we use the Florida past as the usual working tools-for the future. But while this apparent, conservatism may seem to make it more palatable, the fact is that we now decide for the first time that in this new situation the rule of sovereign immunity has pervasive decisive force.
Where the choice is open, I think we ought not to give this transfusion to a body of law that is now so weary. If we attempt to assess what the likely holding of Florida would be, we ought, I think, to appraise carefully the Florida climate in this very field. Here I think the Florida atmosphere is increasingly hostile to this vestigial rule for as new situations arise, Florida declines to apply it. See for example State Road Department v. Bender, 147 Fla. 15, 2 So.2d 298; State Road Department v. Tharp, 146 Fla. 745, 1 So.2d 868; Kaufman v. City of Tallahassee, 84 Fla. 634, 94 So. 697, 30 A.L.R. 471; Bray v. City of Winter Garden, Fla., 40 So.2d 459; City of Miami v. Brooks, Fla., 70 So.2d 306.
*625Moreover the approach1 of the Court is to obliterate the distinction between a tort liability and that imposed by contract apparently on the theory that the dollar impact on the entity would be the same.
Of course that is to disregard really ancient markers as hoary as the plea that the king can do no wrong. And it introduces a disturbing innovation in Florida law that if, on analysis, the entity would not have been liable had the judgment been rendered in a tort action, there can be no liability under an express contract.
What that does is sharply illustrated by the contract in question here by which for twenty-five years the entire District has obtained a real and essential benefit. In it the District agreed that it would make all repairs to the track and right of way necessitated by the use, maintenance or alteration of the under-track drainage lines.2 That is a perfectly reasonable contractual undertaking. The right to make alteration and repairs and to maintain the drainage pipes gives rise to a contractual obligation to perform the operations in a workmanlike manner. A breach of performance would be a breach of contract notwithstanding the fact that it might have tort implications, see, e. g., Weyerhaeuser S. S. Co. v. Nacirema Operating Co., 355 U.S. 563, 78 S.Ct. 438, 2 L.Ed.2d 491, see especially at page 494 and footnote 5; Ryan Stevedoring Co. v. Pan-Atlantic S. S. Corp., 350 U.S. 124, 76 S.Ct. 232, 100 L.Ed. 133, 141.
I would doubt that the most ardent advocate of sovereign immunity would claim that such a contractual undertaking was beyond the power of a Florida Drainage District if, assuming that the drainage easement was obtained by formal condemnation proceedings, the District, as a part of subsequent improvement or maintenance, went in and removed the dirt fill from under the tracks for a distance of 25 feet leaving rails and fastened ties suspended in mid-air. Would the Railroad under the state and national duty imposed upon it to run the trains be without a remedy save by the sovereign’s grace?
The answer, in the light of the Court’s opinion, is now at best obscure. For now the touchstone is whether the liability is a vicarious tort liability or is akin to it or might have been cast in such a form.
By confusing that which is basically different, by sweeping aside a jurisprudence produced by centuries of experience recognizing, especially in the field of municipal and governmental entities, *626a distinction between tort and contract, we have done an unusual thing: we have made the wall of sovereign immunity higher and stronger in Florida.
I therefore respectfully dissent.

. The Court states:
“Certainly the district could pay money or other valuable consideration, so long as the consideration is not one that is itself illegal. Since the district could not be liable by law in tort for its negligence or vicariously for that of others, it should not be allowed to accept such liability merely because accepting it is consideration for the acquisition of a valuable right. To hold otherwise would be to permit the district to negate a policy the state has established for the protection of its citizens by permitting the district to assume a liability or purpose for which the taxpayer’s money is to go when the legislature and the courts of Florida have said that such money must not go for that purpose.”

. The contract provides:
“3. The lines of pipe shall be installed, maintained, repaired and renewed at the expense of the Licensee [District] and under the supervision and direction, and subject to the approval and acceptance, of the Chief Engineer of the Railway.
* * * * *
“5. The Licensee [District] will make all repairs to the tracks and other property of the Railway necessitated by the installation, operation, use, maintenance or removal of said lines of pipe * * * The Railway may, at its option, make such repairs, and the Licensee [District] will * * * promptly reimburse the Railway therefor.
“6. Should the Licensee [District] discontinue the operation of said lines of pipe * * * said lines of pipe shall be removed by the Licensee [District] at the expense of the latter, from beneath the tracks and from the property of the Railway, or the Railway may, at its option, remove the same, at the expense of the Licensee [District]. In case of such removal, * * * the tracks and property of the Railway are to be left in as good condition as when previously found • * *’>