Court Opinion

ID: 9428057
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:22:39.438473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:11.463153
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Rehnquist,
with whom Mr. Justice Marshall joins, dissenting.
This is clearly a case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts. In choosing between two admittedly inconsistent precedents, Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430 (1943), and Industrial Comm’n of Wisconsin v. McCartin, 330 U. S. 622 (1947), six of us agree that the latter decision, McCartin, is analytically indefensible. See ante, at 269-272 (plurality opinion); infra, at 291. The remaining three Members of the Court concede that it “rest[s] on questionable foundations.” Ante, at 289 (opinion of White, J., joined by Burger, C. J., and Powell, J.). Nevertheless, when the smoke clears, it is Magnolia rather than McCartin that the plurality suggests should be overruled. See ante, at 285-286. Because I believe that Magnolia was correctly decided, and because I fear that the rule proposed by the plurality is both ill-considered and ill-defined, I dissent.
In his opinion for the Court in Magnolia, Mr. Chief Justice Stone identified the issue as “whether, under the full faith and credit clause, Art. IV, § 1 of the Constitution of the United States, an award of compensation for personal injury under the Texas Workmen’s Compensation Law . . . bars a further recovery of compensation for the same injury under the Louisiana Workmen’s Compensation Law_” 320 U. S., at 432. A majority of this Court answered that inquiry in the affirmative,1 holding that the injured employee “was free *291to pursue his remedy in either state but, having chosen to seek it in Texas, where the award was res judicata, the full faith and credit clause precludes him from again seeking a remedy in Louisiana upon the same grounds.” Id., at 444. With the substitution of Virginia and the District of Columbia for Texas and Louisiana, this case presents precisely the same question as Magnolia, and, I believe, demands precisely the same answer.
As the plurality today properly notes, Magnolia received rather rough treatment at the hands of a unanimous Court in McCartin. I need not dwell upon the inadequacies of that latter opinion, however, since the plurality itself spotlights those inadequacies quite convincingly. As it observes, Mc-Cartin is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile with “normally accepted full faith and credit principles.” Ante, at 270. I also agree completely with the plurality’s ultimate conclusion that the rule announced in McCartin “represents an unwarranted delegation to the States of this Court’s responsibility for the final arbitration of full faith and credit questions.” Ante, at 271.
One might suppose that, having destroyed McCartin’s ratio decidendi, the plurality would return to the eminently defensible position adopted in Magnolia. But such is not the case. The plurality instead raises the banner of “stare decisis” and sets out in search of a new rationale to support the result reached in McCartin, significantly failing to even attempt to do the same thing for Magnolia.
If such post hoc rationalization seems a bit odd, the theory ultimately chosen by the plurality is even odder. It would seem that, contrary to the assumption of this Court for at least the past 40 years, a judgment awarding workmen’s *292compensation benefits is no longer entitled to full faith and credit unless, and only to the extent that, such a judgment resolves a disputed issue of fact. I believe that the plurality’s justification for such a theory, which apparently first surfaced in a cluster of articles written in the wake of Magnolia,2 does not withstand close scrutiny.
The plurality identifies three different “state interests” at stake in the present case: Virginia’s interest in placing a limit on the potential liability of companies doing business in that State, Virginia’s interest in the “integrity of its formal determinations of contested issues,” and a shared interest of Virginia and the District of Columbia in the welfare of the injured employee. See ante, at 277. The plurality then undertakes to balance these interests and concludes that none of Virginia’s concerns outweighs the concern of the District of Columbia for the welfare of petitioner.
Whenever this Court, or any court, attempts to balance competing interests it risks undervaluing or even overlooking important concerns. I believe that the plurality’s analysis incorporates both errors. First, it asserts that Virginia’s interest in limiting the liability of businesses operating within its borders can never outweigh the District of Columbia’s interest in protecting its residents. In support of this proposition it cites Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 294 U. S. 532 (1935), and Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 306 U. S. 493 (1939). Both of those cases, however, involved the degree of faith and credit to be afforded statutes of one State by the courts of another State. The present case involves an enforceable judgment entered by Virginia after adjudicatory proceedings. In Magnolia Mr. Chief Justice Stone, who authored both Alaska *293Packers and Pacific Employers, distinguished those two decisions for precisely this reason, chastising the lower court in that case for overlooking “the distinction, long recognized and applied by this Court, . . . between the faith and credit required to be given to judgmehts and that to which local common and statutory law is entitled under the Constitution and laws of the United States.” 320 U. S., at 436. This distinction, which has also been overlooked by the plurality here, makes perfect sense, since Virginia surely has a stronger interest in limiting an employer’s liability to a fixed amount when that employer has already been haled before a Virginia tribunal and adjudged liable than when the employer simply claims the benefit of a Virginia statute in a proceeding brought in another State.
In a similar vein, the plurality completely ignores any interest that Virginia might assert in the finality of its adjudications. While workmen’s compensation awards may be “nonfinal” in the sense that they are subject to continuing supervision and modification, Virginia nevertheless has a cognizable interest in requiring persons who avail themselves of its statutory remedy to eschew other alternative remedies that might be available to them. Otherwise, as apparently is the result here, Virginia’s efforts and expense on an applicant’s behalf are wasted when that applicant obtains a dupli-cative remedy in another State.
At base, the plurality’s balancing analysis is incorrect because it recognizes no significant difference between the events that transpired in this case and those that would have transpired had petitioner initially sought his remedy in the District of Columbia. But there are differences. The Commonwealth of Virginia has expended its resources, at petitioner’s behest, to provide petitioner with a remedy for his injury and a resolution of his “dispute” with his employer. That employer similarly has expended its resources, again at petitioner’s behest, in complying with the judgment entered by Virginia. These efforts, and the corresponding interests in seeing that *294those efforts are not wasted, lie at the very heart of the divergent constitutional treatment of judgments and statutes. Compare Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt with Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n and Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n. In this case, of course, Virginia and respondent employer expended very few resources in the administrative process. But that observation lends no assistance to the plurality, which would flatly hold that Virginia has absolutely no power to guarantee that a workmen’s compensation award will be treated as a final judgment by other States.
In further support of its novel rule, the plurality attempts to distinguish the judgment entered in this case from one entered by a “court of general jurisdiction.” See ante, at 282-283. Specifically, the plurality points out that the Industrial Commission of Virginia, unlike a state court of general jurisdiction, was limited by statute to consideration of Virginia law. According to the plurality, because the Commission “was not requested, and had no authority, to pass on petitioner’s rights under District of Columbia law, there can be no constitutional objection to a fresh adjudication of those rights.” Ante, at 283. See also ante, at 285.
This argument might have some force if petitioner had somehow had Virginia law thrust upon him against his will. In this case, however, petitioner was free to choose the applicable law simply by choosing the forum in which he filed his initial claim. Unless the District of Columbia has an interest in forcing its residents to accept its law regardless of their wishes, I fail to see how the Virginia Commission’s inability to look to District of Columbia law impinged upon that latter jurisdiction’s interests. I thus fail to see why petitioner’s election, as consummated in his Virginia award, should not be given the same full faith and credit as would be afforded a judgment entered by a court of general jurisdiction.
*295I suspect that my Brethren’s insistence on ratifying McCarthy s result despite condemnation of its rationale is grounded in no small part upon their concern that injured workers are often coerced or maneuvered into filing their claims in jurisdictions amenable to their employers. There is, however, absolutely no evidence of such overreaching in the present case. Indeed, had there been “fraud, imposition, [or] mistake” in the filing of petitioner’s claim, he would have been permitted, upon timely motion, to vacate the award. See Harris v. Diamond Construction Co., 184 Va. 711, 720, 36 S. E. 2d 573, 577 (1946). In this regard, the award received by petitioner is treated no differently than any other judicial award, nor should it be.
There are, of course, exceptional judgments that this Court has indicated are not entitled to full faith and credit. See, e. g., Huntington v. Attrile, 146 U. S. 657 (1892) (penal judgments); Fall v. Eastin, 215 U. S. 1 (1909) (judgment purporting to convey property in another State). Such exceptions, however, have been “few and far between. . . .” Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, 295 (1942). Furthermore, as this Court noted in Magnolia, there would appear to be no precedent for an exception in the case of a money judgment rendered in a civil suit. See 320 U. S., at 438. In this regard, there is no dispute that the award authorized by the Industrial Commission of Virginia here is, at least as a matter of Virginia law, equivalent to such a money judgment. See Va. Code §§ 65.1-40, 65.1-100.1 (1980).
I fear that the plurality, in its zeal to remedy a perceived imbalance in bargaining power, would badly distort an important constitutional. tenet. Its “interest analysis,” once removed from the statutory choice-of-law context considered by the Court in Alaska Packers and Pacific Employers, knows no metes or bounds. Given the modem proliferation of quasi-judicial methods for resolving disputes and of various tribunals of limited jurisdiction, such a rule could only lead to *296confusion.3 I find such uncertainty unacceptable, and prefer the rule originally announced in Magnolia, Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, a rule whose analytical validity is, even yet, unchallenged.
The Full Faith and Credit Clause did not allot to this Court the task of “balancing” interests where the “public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings” of a State were involved. It simply directed that they be given the “Full Faith and Credit” that the Court today denies to those of Virginia. I would affirm the judgment of the court below.

 The plurality characterizes the majority in Magnolia as “tenuous” because Mr. Justice Jackson joined four other Members of the Court in the belief that the result was dictated by Williams v North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287 (1942), a decision from which he had dissented. See ante, at 267, n. 11. I do not read Mr. Justice Jackson’s concurrence as casting any doubt upon the logical underpinning of Magnolia. Instead, he seemed to *291direct his concurrence at what he perceived to be an inconsistency in the position adopted by Mr. Justice Black and Mr. Justice Douglas, both of whom had joined Williams but were dissenting in Magnolia. For a similar exchange, see Dennis v. United States, 339 U. S. 162, 173-175 (1950) (Jackson, J., concurring in result), and id., at 175-181 (Black, J., dissenting).

 See Cheatham, Res Judicata and the Full Faith and Credit Clause: Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 44 Colum. L. Rev. 330, 341-346 (1944); Freund, Chief Justice Stone and the Conflict of Laws, 59 Harv. L. Rev. 1210, 1229-1230 (1946); Reese & Johnson, The Scope of Full Faith and Credit to Judgments, 49 Colum L. Rev. 153, 176-177 (1949).

 Arbitration awards, for example, have traditionally been afforded full faith and credit. See, e. g., Pan American Food Co. v. Lester Lawrence & Son, Inc., 147 F. Supp. 113 (ND Ill. 1956); United States Plywood Corp. v. Hudson Lumber Co., 127 F. Supp. 489 (SDNY 1954); Port Realty Development Corp. v. Aim Consolidated Distribution, Inc., 90 Misc. 2d 757, 395 N. Y. S. 2d 905 (1977). Yet such proceedings incorporate many of the same features found important by this Court in excepting workmen’s compensation awards from that requirement. See also ante, at 288-289 (opinion of White, J.).