Court Opinion

ID: 9584465
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:48:35.993441+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:07:54.518831
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Jackson,
in his concurring opinion in Miles v. Illinois C. R. Co., supra, gave the following reasons for Congress adopting the policy of allowing the plaintiff in F. E. L. A. cases to choose the court in which his action may be tried:
“* * * This judicial treatment of the subject of venue leads Congress and the parties to think of the choice of a forum as a private matter between litigants and in cases like the present obscures the public interest in venue practices behind a rather fantastic fiction that a widow is harassing the Illinois Central Railroad. If Congress had left us free to consult the ultimate public interest in orderly resort to the judicial system, I should agree with Mr. Justice Frankfurter’s conclusion. But the plaintiffs say that they go shopping, not by leave of the courts themselves, hut by the authority of Congress. Whether the Congress has granted such latitude is our question.
“Unless 'there is some hidden meaning in the language Congress has employed, the injured workman or his surviving dependents may choose from the entire territory served by the railroad any place in which to sue, and in which to choose either a federal or a state court of which to ask his remedy. There is nothing which requires a plaintiff to whom such a choice is given to exercise it in a self-denying or large-hearted manner. There is nothing to restrain use of that privilege as all choices of tribunal are commonly used by all plaintiffs to get away from judges who are considered to be unsympathetic and to get before those who are considered more favorable; to get away from juries thought to be small-minded in the matter of verdicts and to get to those thought to be generous; to escape courts whose procedures are burdensome to the plaintiff and to seek out courts whose procedures makes the going easy.
“That such a privilege puts a burden on intrastate commerce may well be admitted, but Congress has the power to burden. The Federal Employers’ Liability Act itself leaves interstate commerce under the burden of a medieval system of compensating the injured railroad worker or his survivors. He is not given a remedy, but only a lawsuit. It is well understood that in most cases he will be unable to pursue that except by splitting his speculative prospects with a lawyer. The functioning of this backward system of dealing with industrial accidents in interstate commerce burdens it with perhaps two dollars of judgment for every dollar that actually reaches those who have been damaged, and it leaves the burden *354of many injuries to be borne by them utterly uncompensated. Such being the major burden under which the workmen and the industry must function, I see no reason to believe that Congress could not have intended the relatively minor additional burden to interstate commerce from loading the dice a little in favor of the workingman in the matter of venue. * * *” [315 U. S. 698, 62 S. Ct. 832.]
All of the reasons therein stated and the reasons assigned for refusal of the courts to dismiss such an action brought in the federal courts prior to the 1948 revision (see cases cited above) and for refusing to allow a state court to enjoin a resident plaintiff from prosecuting such an action in a federal or state court outside of the state of his residence (see Miles v. Illinois C. R. Co., supra; Baltimore & O. R. Co. v. Kepner, 314 U. S. 44, 62 S. Ct. 6, 86 L. Ed. 28, 136 A. L. R. 1222, together with the A. L. R. notes to these cases) are still valid reasons why this state should not now adopt such a policy of dismissing such cases under the forum non conveniens doctrine in the absence of express statutory provision authorizing that policy.
Another item which justified Congress in slightly loading the dice in favor of the injured employee, in this antiquated system of giving such employee a law suit instead of compensation, is the inherent advantages of the railroad in discovering and presenting to the court and jury all of the evidence favorable to its cause. Usually all eye witnesses to the accident, other than the injured employee, are other railroad employees whose jobs might depend on whether by their testimony they exonerated themselves from negligence in causing the accident, and in cases of fatal accident, the decedent’s widow is often dependent entirely on this type of adverse witnesses to establish her claim. In non-fatal accidents where there is a question of the extent of the injury suffered the plaintiff is often dependent entirely on the evidence of doctors employed by the railroad. The railroad not only employs the doctors who treat the injured, but have in their employ every type of expert in obtaining evidence, of the workings of all kinds *355of railroad equipment and operations, who are qualified and have the facilities for conducting examinations not only of witnesses, but of all the equipment involved in the accident and other railroad equipment for the purpose of discovering evidence favorable to it to be used in the trial. It has the facilities for preserving such equipment for exhibition purposes, of taking still and moving pictures of such equipment and of experiments conducted by it to be used as evidence. Most of these advantages are not available to the plaintiff.
The railroads also have a decided advantage in always having available from the moment of the accident the best possible legal counsel. They are able to constantly retain the services of the most able legal talent, who by constant practice in this field are able to keep up with the rulings and best tactics used in the trial of such cases. Such legal staffs are always able to try their cases well, present their evidence and arguments in their most favorable light and establish the confidence of the courts in their ability, soundness and integrity. From reading the second disbarment opinions, In re. Evans, et al. supra, such attorney seems to have convinced the court in the first disbarment hearing to believe that an obviously erroneous and void decision was correct and proper.
Under such circumstances unless there is available to the injured employee equally as capable legal services many just claims will be defeated for lack of effective presentation of such claims. The ordinary general legal practitioner with limited practice in this field and limited facilities for discovering and presenting the facts favorable to the injured employee’s case is not equipped to compete with the railroad in a trial of this kind. Unless sufficient of this kind of business is concentrated in one place to keep a law firm sufficiently busy therewith so that it can keep abreast with all the latest rulings and best devices used in this kind of *356litigation, and can keep available the necessary experts for consultation and use in discovering, preparing and presenting the facts to the jury, and are able to present clearly and orderly their arguments to the courts, such a trial will be very one-sided and the employee will not have a fair chance to obtain the just compensation for his injury to which he is entitled. I wonder if the desire to avoid trials of these cases in opposition to such highly skilled lawyers as have been available to plaintiff in the past is not a potent reason for this motion. For these reasons I would not depart from our past policy and adopt one of dismissing F. E. L. A. cases under the doctrne of forum non conveniens in the absence of express statutory authority therefor.