Court Opinion

ID: 9443569
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:25:00.180806+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:32.386323
License: Public Domain

FRANK, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
My colleagues rest their decision on adherence to the previous decisions in this circuit that papers labelled an “appeal” must never be accepted by us as a petition for mandamus. I feel constrained to follow such recent precedents in this court and therefore to concur. However, I regret this new manifestation of procedural rigidity in appellate practice. As Judge L. Hand said, dissenting from a similar ruling in Abbe v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 2 Cir., 171 F.2d 387, 388, “True, an appeal is not a petition for that writ [mandamus], but, since the only difference is one of form, I am not willing to- put the appellant out of court for his failure to- call his application by its right name.” As I said, when dis*739senting in United States ex rel. Sutton v. Mulcahy, 2 Cir., 169 F.2d 94 at page 102, “In divers contexts, we have rejected antiquated procedural technicalism, the exaltation of labels, in the practice of the trial ' courts. For instance, we have held that, when a suit is erroneously begun in admiralty, the district court should entertain it if it appears that the court has jurisdiction of the suit regarded as one at common law. We ought not thus insist on such enlightened modernity in lower courts and retain rigid antiquarianism in our court. I see no reason why irrational procedural formalism, judicial redtape-ism, yielding injustice, should not be repudiated in the appellate process, when no statute stands in the way.”