Court Opinion

ID: 9442285
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:42:18.707028+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:02.629163
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I incline to believe that my colleagues and the Fourth Circuit are probably correct in holding that the plaintiff cannot now seek relief from the transfer order by an appeal at this stage of the case, since the statute governing appeals bars appeals from interlocutory orders, and since the removal order is probably interlocutory. However, Congress, when it recently substituted a transfer order for an order of dismissal previously used (under the forum non conveniens doctrine) in cases like this, almost surely did not plan such a result, i. e., I think that Congress did not have in mind that the transfer order would be interlocutory and non-appealable. I think, therefore, that a sense of justice should prompt us to grant relief, if possible, by way of mandamus.1 For if, on the facts here, the transfer order was improper, plaintiff may be seriously hurt, should he be obliged to wait, for a vacation or reversal of that order, until the completion of a trial in Wisconsin. Indeed, paradoxically, if he must thus wait, and then wins at the end of the trial, the hurt to him, caused by the transfer, will be wholly irremediable.
My colleagues, conceding the hardship to plaintiff if the mandamus road is closed, say that that road will be open to plaintiff, after the transfer of the case, in the Seventh Circuit which, my colleagues say, will have the power to direct a re-transfer of this case, before trial, to the court below. But such a procedure involves, necessarily, considerable expense for the plaintiff. He has already had printed and in this court a transcript of the record consisting of 134 printed pages, and a brief 23 pages in length. Under my colleagues’ decision, he must now reprint, at least in part, the transcript and his brief, and must also pay his lawyer the expense of a trip *871to Chicago and (presumably) another fee for the oral argument in the Seventh Circuit. The expense,' delay and bother we could now save him were we promptly to decide whether to issue a writ of mandamus.
My colleagues seem to answer thus: (1) The statute empowers us to issue such a writ only “in aid of” our appellate “jurisdiction.” 2 (2) The word “jurisdiction” in this context means not .(a) the jurisdiction of this federal circuit court but (b) solely federal court jurisdiction as distinguished from state court jurisdiction. It is with point (2) of this reasoning that I disagree.
I grant that a court’s sense of justice 3 should not induce it to ignore limitations on its power imposed by statute 4 or by precedents so well established that it would be improper to alter them judicially.5 But I see no such barriers here. I find nothing in the legislative history or wording of the statute as to writs of mandamus, nor in any decisions construing that statute, which compels the undesirable conclusion at which my colleagues have apparently arrived.
There is one sentence in my colleagues’ opinion which perhaps intimates that, were the impropriety of the transfer order sufficiently glaring, we could issue the writ, but that, absent such glaring facts, it is much to be preferred that the Seventh Circuit consider whether a writ should issue. Even if this restricted interpretation of my colleagues’ opinion is correct, I disagree. For I perceive no reason why the Seventh Circuit can better decide the issue than can we. After all, the removal order was made by a district court within this Circuit. And, if the Seventh Circuit does issue a writ, the situation will become involved: That Circuit Court will direct the district court in Wisconsin to re-transfer the case to the court below. But the court below will not be subject to a re-transfer order entered by the Seventh Circuit, and might, refusing to comply with that order, again transfer the case to Wisconsin. Perhaps, in those circumstances, we would intervene, and, probably, feeling obliged to follow the Seventh Circuit’s determination, would, by mandamus, then direct the court below to hear the case. Such is the complicated procedure which my colleagues’ decision opens up as a possibility. I fail to understand why we should require such an involved procedure instead of ourselves determining at once whether the order of the lower court was within its discretion. We can do so now, for all the facts bearing on the propriety of that order are in the record now before us.

. Judge Learned Hand and I have urged that, in an appropriate ease, an appeal should be treated as a petition for a mandamus. But our colleagues have disagreed with us. I therefore concur in Judge Hand’s conclusion that, except in unusual situations such as that here, our recent precedents constrain us to adhere to formalism, as to pleadings, of a kind which we decry when employed by the district courts. But see Georgia Hardwood Lumber Co. v. Compania, De Navegacion Transmar, S. A., 323 U.S. 334, 335, 65 S.Ct. 293, 89 L.Ed. 280; dissenting opinion in U. S. ex rel. Sutton v. Mulcahy, 2 Cir., 169 F.2d 94, 97, at page 102.

. 28 U.S.C.A. § 1651(a), formerly 28 U.S.C.A. § 377.

. Cf. Calm, The Sense of Injustice (1949) 37-38.
Some lawyers seem to consider it scandalous that a court should ever state that it is prompted by a sense of justice to reach a result, even within the allowable limits. Cf. Eckler, 17 Un. of Chicago L.Rev. (1949) 56, 62; Sheppard, The Decadence of the System of Precedents, 24 Harv.L.Rev. (1911) 298, 302. But I think that Holmes, J., took a contrary position in his many comments on the public policy considerations that ought to sway courts. Note also that the conservative Chancellor Kent said, in a letter, that, when deciding a case, he first made himself “master of the facts.” Then, he continued, “I saw where justice lay, and the moral sense decided the court half the time; I then sat down to search the authorities * * * I might once in a while be embarrassed by a technical rule, but I almost always found principles suited to my view of the case. * * *”

. See N. L. R. B. v. National Maritime Union, 2 Cir., 175 F.2d 686, 690 and note 7.

. See Holmes, J., in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U.S. 205, 218, 221, 37 S.Ct. 524, 531, 61 L.Ed. 1086, L.R.A. 1918C, 451, Ann.Cas.1917E 900: “A common-law judge could not say, ‘I think the doctrine of consideration a bit of historical nonsense and shall not enforce it in my court.’ ” See also Slifka v. Johnson, 2 Cir., 161 F.2d 467, 469 at page 470; Hoffman v. Palmer, 2 Cir., 129 F.2d 976, 987; dissenting opinion in Commissioner of Internal Revenue v. Hall’s Estate, 2 Cir., 153 F.2d 172 at page- 175; concurring opinion in Aero Spark Plug Co. v. B. G. Corp., 2 Cir., 130 F.2d 290 at pages 297-298; Frank, Courts On Trial (1949) Chapter 19 (especially pp, 270, 285-286).