Court Opinion

ID: 9637324
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:03:30.063424+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:55.403945
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
Williams v. Green Bay & Western R. Co., 66 S.Ct. 284, reversed the exercise of discretion by the trial court, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 59 F.Supp. 98, affirmed by this court, 2 Cir., 147 F.2d 777, to restrict the doctrine of forum non conveniens in narrow limits in cases claimed to involve interference with the internal affairs of a foreign corporation. While doing so, it clearly implied further disapproval of the reaches of Rogers v. Guaranty Trust Co., 288 U.S. 123, 53 S.Ct. 295, 77 L.Ed. 652, 89 A.L.R. 720, decided by a divided court and ever since the subject of critical comment. Cf. Cohen v. American Window Glass Co., 2 *892Cir., 126 F.2d 111, 113, 114; Frank, J., dissenting in the Williams case, 2 Cir., 147 F.2d 777, 781. The Williams case cannot therefore serve as authority for an extension of the doctrine admittedly going beyond that recognized even in the locale most hospitable to it, New York; indeed, quite the contrary.
As we pointed out in Gilbert v. Gulf Oil Corp., 2 Cir., 153 F.2d 883, 886 — another attempt to extend the doctrine even beyond the New York precedents — it seems a serious thing for federal judges of their own initiative to introduce a limitation of the authorized diversity jurisdiction of the federal courts to that district only where most of the witnesses seem likely to be. It may well be a matter of interest to Congress, as in the proposed revision of the Judicial Code which now purports both to extend the venue of actions against foreign corporations and to grant a discretionary power of transfer “for the convenience of parties and witnesses.” Gilbert v. Gulf Oil Corp., supra. But it is another thing for a court to say to a plaintiff that even though Congress has specifically provided that you may sue a defendant duly served in your home district, 28 U.S.C.A. § 112, you may not do so if it will inconvenience your adversary. And even the legislative body may hesitate to change the existing statutes upon examining some of the grounds here relied on for a denial of jurisdiction: the small amount of the plaintiff’s investment, the supposed lack of hotel accommodations in this metropolitan area, the fact that defendant, like most large corporations today, does business and can be sued in many federal districts, and that it is a large corporation at its home base. Such considerations might lead legislators to think that the usually assigned reason for this jurisdiction, the avoidance of local prejudice, has still a sphere of operation.
To date the operation of the doctrine of refusal of jurisdiction otherwise granted seems to have been limited in the- federal courts to the case of supervision of a corporation, noted above, and the quite special admiralty doctrine of refusing adjudication of claims between “foreigners” (real foreign litigants, not merely citizens of another state). The Belgenland, 114 U.S. 355, 5 S.Ct. 860, 29 L.Ed. 152; Charter Shipping Co. v. Bowring, Jones & Tidy, 281 U.S. 515, 50 S.Ct. 400, 74 L.Ed. 1008. And perhaps there is still open the question which troubled us in Gilbert v. Gulf Oil Corp., supra, namely, whether we should tkke over the special New York rule applied there in personal injury and death damage cases. This represents a great extension of the rule beyond anything I have been able to discover. If it is to be done at all, it should be in an unusually “vexatious or oppressive” case, as the terms were used in Williams v. Green Bay & Western R. Co., supra, 66 S.Ct. 284, 287. But this case, like the Gilbert case, illustrates the quite natural, indeed human, tendency of the district court to accept vague generalities as an excuse for avoiding a perhaps protracted litigation. Outside of the considerations mentioned above, which are surely immaterial, if not prejudicial to a fair examination of the point, the only ground seems to be the contention of the Casualty Company (the real beneficiary of the action, albeit the only moving party here) that it has many record books, as well as officers, located in Chicago. As I try to pierce these generalities, I find very little; indeed, it seems likely that the records can and should be summarized in written form and that the case may turn upon issues of law upon agreed or undisputed facts as to the employment of the company’s president and of his separate company for unusual remuneration and commissions. Outside of his own testimony, which it probably lies in his power to limit to a deposition if he so chooses, Federal Rule 26(d), 28 U.S. C.A. following section 723c, the amount of oral testimony and of disputed evidence of any sort seems limited. I question the power and policy involved in introducing into the law a limitation upon federal jurisdiction of this kind, and certainly of doing so upon the basis of such vague and general affidavits as these.