Court Opinion

ID: 9445647
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:35:21.251065+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:21.741833
License: Public Domain

POPE, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I find myself in agreement with much that is said in the majority opinion. Plainly both parties were anxious to go to trial, and did proceed at the time set. I certainly agree with the opinion’s encomiums for the jury system as such. Of course all experienced lawyers agree in their admiration for our system of trial by jury. But I fail to see what any of this has to do with the facts or the law of this case.
My first point of disagreement concerns the statement that by not refusing to go to trial United Press waived its objection to the court’s order for trial by jury. Under our system of trials the lawyer is permitted to record his objections, but when the ruling goes against him he is expected to conform. The court may deny his motion to dismiss, but he must answer over. It may refuse his offers of evidence, but he must try the case on what he gets in. It may reject his requested instructions, but he must argue on the basis of those given. Even in the case where what transpires warrants his motion for a mistrial, the court’s denial of the motion does not occasion his refusal to proceed. He knows his remedy lies in his right to appeal. The suggestion in the court’s opinion that after the court below ordered a jury trial plaintiff’s counsel should have picked up his papers and walked out of the courtroom, and that because he did not do so he waived his objection, is surely *30untenable. Courts are not run in that disorderly manner. The law does not impose upon a party the dilemma of either refusing to proceed and thus invite a dismissal, or else going ahead at the risk of waiver.
The crucial question in this case does not concern the time when the trial started. It concerns the time when the trial ended, and a decision was called for. It was then that the court failed in its duty to resolve the case.
My objection to the result here reached is based primarily upon the fact that the only judicial officer qualified or authorized to determine the issues of fact presented in this ease has never done so. If this were a case properly triable to a jury whose verdict would have the same effect as if trial by jury were a matter of right, I would have no difficulty in concluding that the judgment here must be affirmed.1 But the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure which settle the question whether this case was one for determination by the court, or by a jury, are too clear for argument or doubt, and when the trial ended the duty to decide rested squarely on the court.
The parties, by failure to make demand within the time fixed by Rule 38, waived trial by jury. Subsequently appellees moved for a jury trial notwithstanding their failure to make the demand. Such a motion was authorized by Rule 39(b). The court denied it. Nearly seven months later, and on the afternoon before the trial was to begin, the court, acting solely upon its own initiative, ordered a jury trial. The motion for jury, denied some months earlier, had not been renewed. Appellant objected to the order for jury trial, on the ground that its evidence, some of it taken by deposition, had been prepared on the assumption the case would be tried to the court. Stating, “it is a matter of indifference to me”, counsel for appellees disclaimed any intention to make or renew any motion on his part.2 The court had no motion before it; the prior motion was long since disposed of, — it was functus officio; it had not been renewed, and the court so considered the situation for its order recited: “Ordered, sua sponte, under Rule 39, F.R.C.P., that the case be tried by a jury.” (Italics supplied).
The jury trial which the court may order under Rule 39(b),3 may only be ordered “upon motion”. This is made doubly plain by the provision in Rule 39(c) that the advisory jury there provided for may be ordered “upon motion or of its own initiative”. (Emphasis added.) In my view, therefore, the judge could *31not summon a jury for trial of the issues in the manner of a common law jury.4 It does not aid the appellees to argue, as they do, that the court had the right of its own motion to call an advisory jury,5 for there was no compliance with the mandatory requirements of Rule 52(a) that in such a case “the court shall find the facts specially.” 6
The suggestion in the majority opinion, that the Rules of Civil Procedure cannot restrict the power of the court to grant a jury trial at any time, be there prior waiver or not, seems to me to be wholly without reason or support. Assuming that a court, under the common law practice, or that prevailing before the rules, could order a jury trial notwithstanding a prior waiver thereof, yet this power cannot properly be treated as a part of the court’s “jurisdiction” which cannot be limited by a rule. Rule 82 provides: “These rules shall not be construed to extend or limit the jurisdiction of the United States district courts or the venue of actions therein.” But the limitation in Rule 39(b), which restricts an order for jury trial after prior waiver to cases where the court acts “upon motion” and not upon its own initiative is a purely procedural means for arriving at the mode of trial. It in no manner affects the jurisdiction of the court as fixed by the statute. In Mississippi Pub. Corp. v. Murphree, (supra, footnote 4) the Supreme Court pointed out, 326 U.S. at page 445, 66 S.Ct. at page 246, that the “jurisdiction” referred to in Rule 82 meant only “jurisdiction of the subject matter”. The position of the majority cannot be squared with that. It would be as reasonable to argue that Rule 38(b) could not require demand for jury to be not later than 10 days after issue, as such a limitation, not known at common law, would be a limitation upon the court’s jurisdiction!
The net result of all this is that appellant has been denied the findings, on the disputed questions of fact involved, to which the rules entitled it. The judge himself was the only judicial officer empowered to make these findings. In this, as in any other case properly triable to the court. “Rule 52(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure * * * requires the court to ‘find the facts specially’ ”. Kelley v. Everglades Drainage District, 319 U.S. 415, 418, 63 S.Ct. 1141, 1143, 87 L.Ed. 1485. This requirement is mandatory, and where it is disregarded the appellate court must vacate the judgment and remand for appropriate findings.7
*32The jury’s verdict cannot be sustained on any conceivable theory of the evidence. If plaintiff was entitled to any damages, it should have a sum far in excess of the amount inserted in the verdict which was obviously merely an amount copied from the amount of the conceded counterclaim. If plaintiff was entitled to nothing, then defendant’s counterclaim should have been allowed, and so the result cannot be explained on that ground. The court’s error consists in its refusal to afford to appellant the determination of the facts which appellant was entitled to call for. Appellant has been prejudiced here, and justly complains, not on any mere technicality, but upon a most fundamental ground, namely, that it is the right of a litigant to call upon a judge to do the judging which the rules require him to perform.
It would be difficult to find a case presenting a more striking denial of fair consideration of the merits of a litigant’s case. As appears from the order where the judge “sua sponte” directed a jury trial, this was prompted by his suggestion of some sort of partial disqualification. Apparently he thought he ought not find the facts, but that it would be all right to determine the law. In its labored effort to rationalize the jury’s verdict, the majority opinion recites circumstances which bear no resemblance to the evidence of what the damages really were. It cannot conceal the fact that the verdict was obviously an effort of the jury to produce their idea of a rough justice that would give neither party anything, regardless of the law and the instructions. No litigant should be required to stand for that, where, as here, it was not only within the court’s power, but its positive duty, to find the facts from the evidence. What happened to the appellant has no resemblance to a fair trial.
Finally, there is another respect in which there is error in the decision. The court told the jury the contract ran to September 27, 1957. Appellant says this date should have been September 27, 1962. In this it is right.
The contract provided for automatic renewal for periods of five years each in the absence of notice of termination. Through such renewals the contract was extended from October 3, 1948 to October 3, 1953. No notice of termination prior to this last date was given, and the contract was hence then renewed to October 3, 1958. In the meantime on February 21, 1950, a modification agreement was made, suspending the original rates, and reducing them. It provided: “The term of the agreement between the parties shall be extended by the length of time during which the above suspension is in effect.” That modification agreement was subject to termination on 30 days notice, but remained in effect nearly four years and until defendants repudiated the agreement. The court held that the four years operated to make the whole contract terminate a few days pri- or to October 3, 1957. The appellant’s position here is correct that when the suspension period ended the contract had already been extended to 1958, as I have said. The four years would therefore be added to that period.

. It is impossible to tell from the verdict just what the jury decided. It is quite ambiguous. Literally, the verdict decided that the plaintiff was entitled to win, (and rejected the defense of breach of performance by plaintiff), and fixed plaintiff’s damages at the very sum, to the penny, which it was admitted was due defendant on a counterclaim. Viewed in this light, the amount of the verdict, as I read the evidence, is wholly inadequate, but on the assumption here made, this would be a matter about which we could do nothing under the rule of Fairmount Glass Works v. Cub Fork Coal Co., 287 U.S. 474, 53 S.Ct. 252, 77 L.Ed. 439. It is possible, however, that the jury, in deciding to permit no recovery to either party, found the issue as to liability against the plaintiff and disregarded the charge that it must allow the counterclaim. So interpreted, the verdict when returned failed to conform to the court’s instructions. Then, before the jury was discharged, the parties might have requested that the jury be required again to retire and correct or supplement their verdict. In Bradley Min. Co. v. Boice, 9 Cir., 194 F.2d 80, 82, we suggested the propriety of the rule, approved in California, that a party complaining of such a verdict, must make that request.

. “I made no motion to the court for a jury trial at this time. I certainly wouldn’t have done that without giving Mr. Dimond notice, and I assumed that there wouldn’t be any jury.”

. “(b) By the Court. Issues not demanded for trial by jury as provided in Buie 38 shall be tried by the court; but, notwithstanding the failure of a party to demand a jury in an action in which such a demand might have been made of right, the court in its discretion upon motion may order a trial by a jury of any or all issues.

. This view of the effect of Rule 39(h) is stated in a dictum in Hargrove v. American Cent. Ins. Co., 10 Cir., 125 F.2d 225, at page 228: “If the issues tendered by the pleadings are purely legal, the parties are entitled to a jury as of right, rule, 38(a), when demanded as provided in rule 38(b) (c). If no demand is made as provided for in subdivisions (b) and (c), the parties are deemed to have waived the right of trial by jury, but the court may in its discretion, upon motion of either party, order a jury trial of any or all issues, notwithstanding waiver under 38(b) (c), but may not order trial by jury on its own initiative. 3 Moore Federal Practice, 3030, § 39.03.”
Moore, Federal Practice, 2nd ed. Vol. 5, p. 713, footnote 7, explains why the history of the drafting of the rule shows that the failure to provide for such an order on the court’s own initiative was an intentional omission. Such construction of the Committee “is of weight”. Mississippi Pub. Corp. v. Murphree, 326 U.S. 438, 444, 66 S.Ct. 242, 246, 90 L.Ed. 185.
In Sofarelli Bros. v. Elgin, 4 Cir., 129 F.2d 785, 787, the court indicated that the “authorities are not altogether agreed” on this point, but sustained the order for a jury trial in that case on the ground that there had been a sufficient demand for jury trial by one of the parties. No case cited by that court expresses any view contrary to that expressed in, the Hargrove dictum.

. There appears to be a difference of opinion as to whether an advisory jury can ever be called in a law action. See Hargrove v. American Cent. Ins. Co., supra, holding it may not, and (American) Lumbermen’s Mutual Casualty Co. of Illinois v. Timms & Howard, Inc., 2 Cir., 108 F.2d 497, contra.

. The court, when requested to make its own findings, expressed the view that “there is no authority whatever for empanelling an advisory jury except in an equity action.”

. The cases so holding are collected in Steccone v. Morse-Starrett Products Co., 9 Cir., 191 F.2d 197, 200, in footnote 10.