Court Opinion

ID: 9442489
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 18:49:36.93168+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:06.763610
License: Public Domain

WALLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
I think the lower Court had jurisdiction to render a declaratory judgment in this *657case to determine the amount of wages, if any, due Mrs. Ward.
The majority opinion deems the only question involved to be “May a court after an award has been rendered by the Board against a defendant carrier, entertain a suit for declaratory judgment as to the correctness and binding effect of the award ?”
If 1 could agree that the foregoing question is the only one involved in this case, I assuredly would answer it as did the lower Court and as did the majority, hut I think that implicit in this controversy is the right of the Defendant to have properly and seasonably ascertained the amount of money which it is required under the order of the Railway Adjustment Board to pay. I agree that the lower Court does not have the power to determine the question of whether or not the employee should be reinstated or whether or not she has lost her seniority by her failure to come back to work at the end of her leave of absence, but such a holding would in no wise mean that the Court was without jurisdiction to determine that which the Board did not determine, viz., the amount of compensation or pay that the Railroad should make to the employee.
The following are significant dates and events:
July 9, 1942 Mrs. Ward granted leave of absence from railroad.
October 16, 1943 Mrs. Ward released from Government service.
February 17, 1945 Mrs. Ward applied to the Railroad for reinstatement.
December 3, 1948 Railway Adjustment Board ordered Mrs. Ward reinstated with seniority unimpaired and pay for any loss in wages.
December 18, 1948 Railroad requested statement of earnings, time lost, amount claimed by Mrs. Ward to be due, etc.
July 13, 1949 This suit for declaratory judgment filed by Railroad.
April 10, 1950 Suit in State Court filed by Mrs. Ward to enforce award oí Railway Adjustment Board.1
Mrs. Ward’s leave of absence expired on October 16, 1943, the day she was released by Colonel Bedell from the Army work, but she waited sixteen months [February 17, 1945] before she applied for reinstatement. Meanwhile the seniority of regular employees continued to increase to the extent that during the sixteen months there were employees who, under the Union contract, had acquired seniority in excess of that of Mrs. Ward. The record does not show when she instituted proceedings before the Railway Adjustment Board, but she did not procure an order from the Board until December 3, 1948. After procuring that order she failed to furnish a statement requested by the Railroad as to her earnings, losses, time out, etc., which information was essential in order to comply with the Board’s order as to the payment of wages. After procuring the order of the Railway Adjustment Board which afforded her the right to apply to the Court to enforce payment, she waited another sixteen months before she filed such suit. Meanwhile, more pay was daily accumulating in her favor for which she was rendering no service to the Railroad.
The Railroad, caught in a cross fire between the Union on the one hand and the Railway Adjustment Board on the other, could not safely reinstate Mrs. Ward with no loss in seniority without violating its agreement with the Union. As I understand it, the position to which she should have been reinstated depended to some extent upon rights of seniority in other employees that had accrued during the interval between the expiration of her leave of absence and the date of her offer to return.
I do not believe the Courts have reached that state of impotency where they cannot declare the rights of the parties when the party, to whom a statute gives a right of recovery, will not furnish the necessary information upon which to calculate the amount due her or the position of seniority to which she should be returned, nor seasonably take steps to have such rights ascertained by the courts.
This suit for declaratory judgment is not an action under the Railway Labor Act. *658Conceding that under the statute the employee alone has the right to bring suit to enforce the money award, nevertheless, the mere existence of that unexefcised statutory right under the Railway Labor Act in one party is not a proscription against the resort by the other party to any competent remedy which some other statute affords to him whereby he may have ascertained the amount which- he owes.
This is an actual controversy involving in excess of $3,000.00 which arises under the laws of the United States, and it seems to me that under Prayer No. 6 of the complaint, which seeks the rendition of “such judgments, decrees, and orders as may be proper and equitable in the premises”, the Court had jurisdiction — not to set aside the Board’s order — but of the controversy to determine the amount due, to the end that there might be compliance with the Board’s order. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A., seem to call upon the courts to construe the pleadings so as to do substantial justice, and the fact that a plaintiff may have asked too much or too little is not decisive, but whether, from all the facts asserted, his complaint has stated, or failed to state, a claim entitling plaintiff to relief.
These considerations urge me to the view that the Railway Labor Act did not destroy the jurisdiction of the Court to declare the amount of back pay due Defendant, and instead of sustaining the motion of the Defendant to dismiss the action for want of jurisdiction, the Court should have required the Defendant to file a compulsory counter-claim under Rule 13(a), F.R.C.P.

. It was stated In oral argument by counsol for the Railroad, and not refuted by counsel for Mrs. Ward, that she filed suit against the Railroad on the day of the oral argument before us.