Court Opinion

ID: 9419593
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:50:21.246991+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:19.211674
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rutledge,
dissenting.
I concur with Mr. Justice Black's opinion in so far as it relates to the failure of the Illinois Supreme Court to take account of petitioners’ claims based on the Federal Safety Appliance Act. Clearly § 6 of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act does not apply to causes arising under the former Act and, on this ground alone, the judgments should be reversed.
I agree also that the Illinois court has determined the causes under the Employers’ Liability Act solely by its view of federal law and that it has done so erroneously. It has held that neither action was “commenced” in time within the meaning of § 6 and in doing so has interpreted “commenced” to mean begun in a court competent to hear and determine the cause. Under this decision, the causes would not have been commenced, even if similar causes arising under state law were held sufficiently begun, for similar purposes, in identical circumstances. We do not know and cannot know whether local actions so filed and transferred would be barred. We do not know this because, as Mr. Justice Black points out, the Illinois Supreme Court expressly disavowed that it had applied or determined the validity of the Illinois venue statutes, which on their face purport to authorize just such transfers as occurred in these causes.1 Consequently until the *136validity and effect of those statutes are determined, the Illinois court’s decision in these cases must be taken to rest wholly upon its view of the meaning of § 6, entirely independently of the meaning of the state venue statutes, and to be founded solely upon a federal ground.
That ground as the Illinois court decided it is, in my opinion, clearly wrong. It was, apparently, that “commenced” in § 6 always means “commenced in a court competent to hear and determine the cause,” regardless of whether local causes may be sufficiently commenced, for similar purposes, in a court of limited jurisdiction capable of transferring but not of hearing and deciding them. Nothing in § 6 or the Act so states. On the contrary, when the suit is in a state court, it is to be taken, by fair implication, that whatever is sufficient generally to constitute be*137ginning of suit for other actions is beginning of suit for these. If for instance it should be the state law that local causes are sufficiently commenced from the time of filing the complaint, though in the wrong court for reasons of jurisdiction relating to trial and decision, if nevertheless upon discovery of the error the cause is transferred to another court having complete jurisdiction, nothing in § 6 or the Federal Employers’ Liability Act requires or permits suits brought under that Act to be treated differently. A state may confer upon its courts of limited jurisdiction limited powers over causes they are not competent to hear and decide. A salutary instance would be to safeguard litigants against unwitting loss of their rights of action through stumbling into jurisdictional pitfalls, by providing that actions filed in the wrong court should not be defeated through lapse of time merely because the plaintiff had mistaken his court, if upon discovery of the error, though after the period, the cause were transferred promptly to a fully competent court. Such a provision would merely create either an exception to the statute of limitations or a means of suspending the time of its running. On their face, that is what the Illinois venue statutes purport to do, though whether this is their effect is of course for the state courts to decide.
In any event, such a statute would not be contrary to or inconsistent with § 6 or any other provision of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. On the contrary, litigants in the state courts under that Act would be entitled to the benefit of such a provision if this were given to litigants having causes arising under state law.
Accordingly, since the Illinois court has held that § 6 by its own terms requires that the commencing event take place in a court having jurisdiction not only to begin and transfer, but also to hear and to decide, the judgments should be reversed and remanded.

 The pertinent provisions of the Illinois venue statutes are as follows: “That wherever any suit or proceeding shall hereafter be commenced, in any court of record in this state, and it shall appear to the court where the same is pending, that the same has been commenced in the wrong court or county, then upon motion of either or any of the *136parties to such suit or proceeding, the court shall change the venue of such suit or proceeding to the proper court or county, and the same when the venue shall be so changed, shall be then pending and triable in such court or county to which the same shall be so changed the same as in other cases of change of venue: Provided, that where either party to such suit or proceeding shall procure the change of venue as herein provided for, that the court shall require the plaintiff in said suit to pay all costs in such suit' or proceeding, up to and including the costs of the change of venue except such costs, if any there are, as shall have been made or occasioned by answer to the merits and a trial thereon, if any such shall have been had or made, and such costs, if any, caused by answer to the merits and trial thereon shall abide the final result of such suit or proceeding the same as in other cases of change of venue.” Ill. Rev. Stat., 1943, c. 146, § 36.
“Change of venue from city courts, for the same causes and in the same manner, may be taken as from circuit courts, and the cases sent to any other city court, or to any circuit court, or to any other court of competent jurisdiction where the cause complained of does not exist: . . Ill. Rev. Stat., 1943, c. 37, § 346.
“The clerk of the court to which the change of venue is granted shall file the transcript and papers transmitted to him and docket the cause, and such cause shall be proceeded in and determined in all things, as well before as after judgment, as if it had originated in such court.” III. Rev. Stat., 1943, c. 146, § 16.- (Emphasis added.)