Court Opinion

ID: 9420405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:54:19.968991+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:24.866828
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom
Mr. Justice Jackson joins, dissenting.
Insignificant as this case appears on the surface, its disposition depends on the adjustment made between two judicial systems charged with the enforcement of a law binding on both. This, it bears recalling, is an important factor in the working of our federalism without needless friction.
Have the Georgia courts disrespected the law of the land in the judgment under review? Since Congress empowers State courts to entertain suits under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, a State cannot wilfully shut its courts to such cases. Second Employers’ Liability *300Cases, 223 U. S. 1. But the courts so empowered are creatures of the States, with such structures and functions as the States are free to devise and define. Congress has not imposed jurisdiction on State courts for claims under the Act “as against an otherwise valid excuse.” Douglas v. New York, New Haven & H. R. Co., 279 U. S. 377, 388. Again, if a State has dispensed with the jury in civil suits or has modified the common-law requirements for trial by jury, a plaintiff must take the jury system as he finds it if he chooses to bring his suit under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act in a court of that State. Minneapolis & St. L. R. Co. v. Bombolis, 241 U. S. 211. After all, the Federal courts are always available.
So also, States have varying systems of pleading and practice. One State may cherish formalities more than another, one State may be more responsive than another to procedural reforms. If a litigant chooses to enforce a Federal right in a State court, he cannot be heard to object if he is treated exactly as are plaintiffs who press like claims arising under State law with regard to the form in which the claim must be stated — the particularity, for instance, with which a cause of action must be described. Federal law, though invoked in a State court, delimits the Federal claim — defines what gives a right to recovery and what goes to prove it. But the form in which the claim must be stated need not be different from what the State exacts in the enforcement of like obligations created by it, so long as such a requirement does not add to, or diminish, the right as defined by Federal law, nor burden the realization of this right in the actualities of litigation.
Of course “this Court is not concluded” by the view of a State court regarding the sufficiency of allegations of a Federal right of action or defense. This merely means that a State court cannot defeat the substance of a Federal *301claim by denial of it. Nor can a State do so under the guise of professing merely to prescribe how the claim should be formulated. American R. Express Co. v. Levee, 263 U. S. 19, 21.
The crucial question for this Court is whether the Georgia courts have merely enforced a local requirement of pleading, however finicky, applicable to all such litigation in Georgia without qualifying the basis of recovery under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act or weighting the scales against the plaintiff. Compare Norfolk Southern R. Co. v. Ferebee, 238 U. S. 269, with Central Vermont R. Co. v. White, 238 U. S. 507. Georgia may adhere to its requirements of pleading, but it may not put “unreasonable obstacles in the way” of a plaintiff who seeks its courts to obtain what the Federal Act gives him. Davis v. Wechsler, 263 U. S. 22, 25.
These decisive differences are usually conveyed by the terms “procedure” and “substance.” The terms are not meaningless even though they do not have fixed undeviating meanings. They derive content from the functions they serve here in precisely the same way in which we have applied them in reverse situations — when confronted with the problem whether the Federal courts respected the substance of State-created rights, as required by the rule in Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U. S. 64, or impaired them by professing merely to enforce them by the mode in which the Federal courts do business. Review on this aspect of State court judgments in Federal Employers’ Liability cases presents essentially the same kind of problem as that with which this Court dealt in Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U. S. 99, applied at the last Term in Ragan v. Merchants Transfer & Warehouse Co., 337 U. S. 530, and Cohen v. Beneficial Industrial Loan Corp., 337 U. S. 541, 555. Congress has authorized State courts to enforce Federal rights, and Federal courts State-created *302rights. Neither system of courts can impair these respective rights, but both may have their own requirements for stating claims (pleading) and conducting litigation (practice).
In the light of these controlling considerations, I cannot find that the Court of Appeals of Georgia has either sought to evade the law of the United States or did so unwittingly. That court showed full awareness of the nature and scope of the rights and obligations arising under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act as laid down in this Court’s decisions.1 It fully recognized that the right under the Act is founded on negligence by the carrier in whole or in part, that “assumption of risk” must rigorously be excluded, that contributory negligence does not defeat the action but merely bears on damages. Nor is it claimed that by the use of presumptions or otherwise the State court placed on the plaintiff a burden of proof exceeding that of the Act. All that the Georgia court did was conscientiously to apply its understanding of what is necessary to set forth a claim of negligence according to the local requirement of particularity. Concretely it ruled that “The mere presence of a large clinker in a railroad yard can not be said to constitute an act of negligence.” For all that appears, the Georgia court said in effect, the clinker had been placed there under such circumstances that responsibility could not be charged against the defendant. On this and other assumptions not met by plaintiff’s complaint, the court did not find in the phraseology used in the complaint that the de*303fendant was chargeable with neglect for the presence of the offending clinker in a yard operated by itself as well as another carrier. I would not so read the complaint. But this does not preclude the Georgia court from taking a more constrained view. By so doing it has not contracted rights under the Federal Act nor hobbled the plaintiff in getting a judgment to which he may be entitled.
It is not credible that the Georgia court would be found wanting had it stated that under Georgia rules, as a matter of pleading, it was necessary to state in so many words that the presence of the particular clinker was due to the defendant’s negligence, and to set forth the detailed circumstances that made the defendant responsible, although the range of inference open to a jury was not thereby affected. This is what that court’s decision says in effect in applying the stiff Georgia doctrine of construing a complaint most strongly against the pleader. It is not a denial of a Federal right for Georgia to reflect something of the pernicketiness with which seventeenth-century common law read a pleading. Had the Georgia court given leave to amend in order to satisfy elegancies of pleading, the case would of course not be here. With full knowledge of the niceties of pleading required by Georgia the plaintiff had that opportunity. Georgia Code § 81-1301 (1933).2 He chose to stand on his complaint against a general demurrer. If Georgia thereafter authorizes dismissal of the complaint, the State does not thereby collide with Federal law.
I would affirm the judgment.

 Indeed, the history of Georgia legislation and adjudication indicates that long before there was a Federal Employers’ Liability Act that State was humane and not harsh in allowing recovery to railroad employees for injuries caused by the negligence of the carrier. Ga. Laws 1855, p. 155; Augusta & S. R. Co. v. McElmurry, 24 Ga. 75; Dodd, Administration of Workmen’s Compensation 13-14 (1936).

 See also Wells v. Butler’s Builders’ Supply Co., 128 Ga. 37, 40, 57 S. E. 55, 57; Cahoon v. Wills, 179 Ga. 195, 175 S. E. 563; Note, 106 A. L. R. 570, 574 (1937); Davis and Shulman, Georgia Practice and Procedure § 96 (1948).