Court Opinion

ID: 9641477
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:32:54.579998+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:10:37.757656
License: Public Domain

L. HAND, Chief Judge
(concurring).
There has been a spate of decisions as to whether, after he has been injured, an employee may make a valid contract which limits the choice of forums allowed him by § 6. Some of these have held such contracts valid; some have held them invalid under § 5; in one it was suggested that they were invalid because of the hostility which courts have always felt towards contracts which forbad resort to any courts to which the law gave access. My Brother CLARK has said all that can be said regarding these; and, obviously, the situation is one where only the Supreme Court can speak with finality. I agree with him in result, but for other .reasons.
The term, “liability,” in colloquial speech has indeed no certain boundaries; but in law, unless the context otherwise demands, it means a duty to another enforceable by sanctions; and to “exempt” one from “liability” means to relieve him of the duty, in whole or in part, which in the case at bar would mean the payment of damages. That is the scope of § S; to extend it to a surrender of any one of the procedural incidents by which the sanctions are imposed, has no warrant in the language chosen by Congress, or in its apparent purpose. As I shall try to show, such contracts ought not indeed to be enforced, unless the employee is adequately protected; but when he is, section 5 does not invalidate them. Duncan v. Thompson1 gives no support to a contrary view. Disregarding the second point decided — that ■ the contract lacked consideration — the contract did “exempt,” and wholly “exempt,” the road from “liability”; for, as matters stood, it had relieved the road from any compulsion to pay damages. It is true that the employee had it within his power to revive the “liability” by repaying the advance, but that is irrelevant; section 5 does not permit such a release whether absolute or conditional'. To surrender access to some of the forums to which section 6 gives the employee resort, does not in the least relieve the road of its duty or of any sanctions for its performance, unless the forum which remains open is not competent to assess the damages and enforce the judgment; and the forum left open in the case at bar was altogether competent for both purposes.
On the other hand, be the original reasons good or bad, courts have 'for long looked with strong disfavor upon contracts by which a party surrenders resort to any forum which was lawfully open to him. Since such contracts . are almost always made before any claim has arisen, there are few decisions which have considered whether that feature is important: that is, whether the doctrine covers contracts made after a claim arises. There are three decisions which make the distinction,2 but in a fourth case one of the judges thought it irrelevant.3 On such a showing I feel free to decide the point as res-integra. In point of principle, I can see no basis for such a distinction. There is of course force in what my brother Swan says: that a man, who has a choice of where to sue upon an existing claim, ought to be allowed to make an irrevocable choice before he actually sues; but is there any greater reason why he should not be able to make the same choice before the claim has arisen ? Whatever the grounds for denying him the privilege in the second case, seem to me to deny it in the first. *561In truth, I do not believe that, today at least, there is an absolute taboo against such contracts at all; in the words of the Restatement,4 they are invalid only when unreasonable; and Mittenthal v. Mascagni,5 is a notable instance in which a contract in futuro was held “reasonable.” What remains of the doctrine is apparently no more than a general hostility, which can be overcome, but which nevertheless does persist.
The Federal Employers’ Liability Act bears evidence that in the eyes of Congress employees do not bargain in all respects as equals with the roads. It relieves them of the defense of assumption of risk; § 6 gives them a larger choice of forums than at that time was open to other plaintiffs ; and § 5 impairs some of their contracts. I do not forget in Callen v. Pennsylvania R. Co.,6 the court held that an employee was not in so unequal a bargaining position that — in the absence of some positive provision of law — he could not settle his claim in full; and if he may do that, it would seem at first blush that he may surrender one of the privileges by which the claim is protected. Yet the differences seem to me critical. Although the employee is ordinarily not qualified to estimate his chances of success in a suit against the road, it is desirable that he shall be able to collect his claims without suit. On the other hand in contracts like that at bar the payment not only does not settle the claim, but it has no relation to any value at which the employee may appraise it, not even after he has discounted it by the hazards of a suit. It is no more than a temporary relief of his immediate necessities, which must be credited upon any recovery or settlement. Moreover, he is at a much greater disadvantage in estimating the effect of the contract upon his rights, than when he settles the claim. He is likely to suppose that one court is like another; and certainly he cannot be deemed to be acquainted with those differences between them which may in fact vitally affect his recovery. For the foregoing reasons, I think that, although § 5 does not bar such contracts, three considerations conspire to take them outside what was decided in Callen v. Pennsylvania R. Co., supra: (1) they are contracts of a kind at which courts have always looked askance; (2) they concern a matter as to which — in some respects at any rate — Congress has shown that it considered the employee to bargain at a disadvantage; (3) that disadvantage is in this instance especially marked and is without any corresponding benefit. I would hold such contracts unenforceable unless the road shows that the employee was fully advised of their effect upon his rights. I need not say what advice is necessary for in the case at bar the road proved nothing on the subject.

 315 U.S. 1, 62 S.Ct. 422, 86 L.Ed. 575.

 Detwiler v. Lowden, 198 Minn. 185, 269 N.W. 307, 838, 107 A.L.R. 1054, 1059. Miller, J., dissenting in Akerly v. New York Cent. R. Co., 6 Cir., 168 F.2d 812; Gitler v. Russian Company for Sea, River & Land Ins., 124 App.Div. 273, 108 N.Y.S. 793.

 Petersen v. Ogden Union Railway & Depot Co., 110 Utah 573, 175 P.2d 744.

 Restatement of Contracts, § 558.

 183 Mass. 19, 66 N.E. 425, 60 L.R A, 812, 97 Am.St.Rep. 404.

 332 U.S. 625, 68 S.Ct. 296.