Court Opinion

ID: 9419230
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:47:48.274171+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:16.486929
License: Public Domain

Ms. Justice Jackson,
concurring:
I agree with the conclusion and, with exceptions stated herein, with the opinion of Ms. Justice Reed, though I *706am not able to sublimate the conflict that underlies this case to the level of either of the conflicting opinions. Realistically considered, the issue is earthy and unprincipled. So viewed, the real issue is whether a plaintiff with a cause of action under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act may go shopping for a judge or a jury believed to be more favorable than he would find in his home forum. An advantage which it is hoped will be reflected in a judgment is what makes plaintiffs leave home and incur burdens of expense and inconvenience that would be regarded as oppressive if forced upon them. And that is what makes railroads seek injunctions such as this one.
The judiciary has never favored this sort of shopping for a forum. It has sought to protect its own good name as well as to protect defendants by injunctions against the practice of seeking out soft spots in the judicial system in which to bring particular kinds of litigation. But the judges, with lawyerly indirection, have not avowed the interest of the judiciary in orderly resort to the courts as a basis for their decision, and have cast their protective doctrines in terms of sheltering defendants against vexatious and harassing suits. This judicial treatment of the subject of venue leads Congress and the parties to think of the choice of a forum as a private matter between litigants, and in cases like the present obscures the public interest in venue practices behind a rather fantastic fiction that a widow is harassing the Illinois Central Railroad. If Congress had left us free to consult the ultimate public interest in orderly resort to the judicial system, I should agree with Me. Justice Feankfuetee’s conclusion. But the plaintiffs say that they go shopping, not by leave of the courts themselves, but by the authority of Congress. Whether the Congress has granted such latitude is our question.
Unless there is some hidden meaning in the language Congress has employed, the injured workman or his sur*707viving dependents may choose from the entire territory served by the railroad any place in which to sue, and in which to choose either a federal or a state court of which to ask his remedy. There is nothing which requires a plaintiff to whom such a choice is given to exercise it in a self-denying or large-hearted manner. There is nothing to restrain use of that privilege, as all choices of tribunal are commonly used by all plaintiffs to get away from judges who are considered to be unsympathetic, and to get before those who are considered more favorable; to get away from juries thought to be small-minded in the matter of verdicts, and to get to those thought to be generous; to escape courts whose procedures are burdensome to the plaintiff, and to seek out courts whose procedures make the going easy.
That such a privilege puts a burden on interstate commerce may well be admitted, but Congress has the power to burden. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act itself leaves interstate commerce under the burden of a medieval system of compensating the injured railroad worker or his survivors. He is not given a remedy, but only a lawsuit. It is well understood that in most cases he will be unable to pursue that except by splitting his speculative prospects with a lawyer. The functioning of this backward system of dealing with industrial accidents in interstate commerce burdens it with perhaps two dollars of judgment for every dollar that actually reaches those who have been damaged, and it leaves the burden of many injuries to be borne by them utterly uncompensated. Such being the major burden under which the workmen and the industry must function, I see no reason to believe that Congress could not have intended the relatively minor additional burden to interstate commerce from loading the dice a little in favor of the workman in the matter of venue. It seems more probable that Congress intended to give the disadvantaged workman some leverage in *708the choice of venue, than that it intended to leave him in a position where the railroad could force him to try one lawsuit at home to find out whether he would be allowed to try his principal lawsuit elsewhere. This latter would be a frequent result if we upheld the contention made in this casé and in the Kepner case. I think, therefore, that the petitioner had a right to resort to the Missouri court under the circumstances of this case for her remedy.
I do not, however, agree with the statement in Mr. Justice Reed's opinion that “the Missouri court here involved must permit this litigation.” It is very doubtful if any requirement can be spelled out of the Federal Constitution that a state must furnish a forum for a nonresident plaintiff and a foreign corporation to fight out issues imported from another state where the cause of action arose. It seems unnecessary to decide now whether this litigation could be imposed on the Missouri court, for it appears to have embraced the litigation. Even if Missouri, by reason of its control of its own courts might refuse to open them to such a case, it does not follow that another state may close Missouri’s courts to one with a federal cause of action. If Missouri elects to entertain the case, the courts of no other state can obstruct or prevent its exercise of jurisdiction as conferred by the federal statute or its right to obtain evidence and to distribute the proceeds, if any, in accordance with the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. I therefore favor reversal.