Court Opinion

ID: 9468046
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 02:02:50.421933+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:40:39.199113
License: Public Domain

TATE, Circuit Judge,
concurring specially:
The Seventh Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees the right to a jury trial in civil actions not derived from equity. The Supreme Court of the United States has held that this constitutional guarantee of a jury trial is applicable to antitrust damage suits, whether or not equitable (non-jury) causes of action are joined with the legal (jury) cause. Beacon Theatres, Inc. v. Westover, 359 U.S. 500, 79 S.Ct. 948, 3 L.Ed.2d 988 (1959); Fleitmann v. Welsbach Street Lighting Co., 240 U.S. 27, 36 S.Ct. 233, 60 L.Ed. 505 (1916). With the exception of In Re Japanese Electronic Products Antitrust Litigation, 631 F.2d 1069 (3d Cir. 1980) (which recognized a due process “complexity” exception), the decisions have been virtually unanimous in holding that the Seventh Amendment and the Supreme Court decisions interpreting it mean what they say: the Constitution grants the parties a right of jury trial in antitrust actions such as the present, no matter what the inconveniences in administration or the complexities of the case. See Fontham, “Developments in the Law — Antitrust Law,” 41 La.L.Rev. 314, 417-28 (1981).
Sound reasons of. administrative inconvenience do indeed often contra-indicate a *277jury trial as a preferable mode of decision in a complex antitrust suit. Perhaps, also, jurors may not competently understand the evidence and issues so as intelligently to decide them; although this plaint has also been made by sophisticated specialists in other areas of litigation less complex than the antitrust field. Likewise, it is undoubtedly true that enforcement of the Bill of Rights, including its guarantee of jury trial, may sometimes produce inconvenient or even unwise results in a particular case, when a broad constitutional right designed to protect individuals in general must be applied without discrimination as to the parties or the case.
Nevertheless, with all the practical arguments commending judicial abrogation of the constitutional right to jury trial in complex antitrust suits, I personally do not believe that an uncharted judicial exception of complexity should be imported so as to cast into doubt the clear right to jury trial previously recognized. Nor do I believe that we should, in here reversing a conscientious trial colleague, do so because of the alleged misapplication of a “complexity” exception, although nevertheless questioning. whether such uncharted exception exists. Our opinion is, however, open to the intimation that the complexity exception does exist, and in my belief it thus tends to create uncertainty in the circuit law on an issue where until now there was certainty.
Therefore, while I concur in the reversal, I think the ground should instead be based upon a square holding that the constitutional right of jury trial in antitrust damage suits (until now recognized by our high court) prevents any judicial abrogation of this right on the grounds of complexity or inconvenience. By here evading this square holding, we open up further complexities of antitrust litigation that may require years to resolve, as our trial colleagues attempt, as did the present dedicated district judge, to chart the limits and plumb the possibilities of a curtailment of a jury trial in complex antitrust suits. Short of an interpretation to the contrary by our high court, therefore, we should not cast doubt upon the Seventh Amendment right of jury trial in antitrust damage actions. We should, instead, adhere to the jurisprudential interpretation clearly applicable and to enforcing the unambiguous Seventh Amendment provision that does not permit of judicially-created exceptions to the right of jury trial when required by our Constitution.