Court Opinion

ID: 9461988
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:29:19.691619+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:21.018827
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Senior Judge,
(concurring).
I concur in the court’s opinion, except in the possibilities it leaves open with respect to review of a magistrate’s rulings of law. The court makes the correct decision, that the magistrate’s rulings are fully reviewable, but I am, perhaps out of an excess of caution, disturbed that by its reference to arbitrators, and to a phrase in Kimberly v. Arms, 129 U.S. 512, 9 S.Ct. 355, 32 L.Ed. 764, it should even contemplate other possibilities.
As to the first mentioned, it is true that arbitrators are normally free of review, legal as well as factual. I do not believe, however, that the magistrate system was provided by Congress to furnish free arbitration service. If parties are content to work outside the judicial system, well and good, but I cannot think Congress intended to pay for it, even though, in a broad sense, a non-reviewable magistrate would “assist” the courts more than one subject to review. I add that to have such unlimited power would not be good for magistrates themselves, who must normally function in a framework of assistance, not of final decision. Cf. O’Shea v. United States, 1 Cir., 1974, 491 F.2d 774.
At least non-review would be a recognizable procedure. The intermediate suggestion, that magistrates should, with the consent of the parties, make rulings of law are subject to review for manifest error, only, to me makes no sense whatever. It would be an anomaly in the law. I do not know the standard it suggests, or how one would apply it. In the case of an alleged manifest error of fact, if the evidence supports a finding either way the magistrate’s choice will be final. How does a magistrate have discretion to choose between two rulings of law? The law is the law. Of course there may be a non-prejudicial error, but that is not what the court is talking about. Secondly, why should a magistrate be given such power? The court’s recognition of such a possibility seems to me both unworkable and unwarranted.
It is true that in the case of Kimberly v. Arms, 1889, 129 U.S. 512, 9 S.Ct. 355, 32 L.Ed. 764, the Court might be thought of having spoken of such a form of review. I believe, however, that the language should be taken as a whole. At page 524, 9 S.Ct. at page 359 appears the following:
“A reference by consent of parties, of an entire case for the determination of all its issues, though not strictly a submission of the controversy to arbitration — a proceeding which is governed by special rules— is a submission of the controversy to a tribunal of the parties’ own selection, to be governed in its conduct by the ordinary rules applicable to the administration of justice in tribunals established by law. Its findings, like those of an indepen*516dent tribunal, are to be taken as presumptively correct, subject, indeed, to be reviewed, under the reservation contained in the consent and order of the court, when there has been manifest error in the consideration given to the evidence, or in the application of the law, but not otherwise.”
If by this language the Court meant that the errors of law, there by a special master, were less reviewable than what has since been fully understood to be the normal scrutiny applied to masters, and certainly is applied to rulings of Article III judges, I believe it was an inadvertence. If not, it has never been repeated. I see no basis for suggesting that a magistrate should be in such a unique position that he is less reviewable than anyone else in the judicial system, and I regret that my brethren should be willing even to contemplate it.