Gulf Oil Corp. v. Gilbert , 330 U.S. 501 ( 1947 )

Mr. Justice Black,

dissenting.

The defendant corporation is organized under the laws of Pennsylvania, but is qualified to do business and maintains an office in New York. Plaintiff is an individual residing and doing business in Virginia. The accident in which plaintiff alleges to have been damaged occurred in Lynchburg, Virginia. Plaintiff brought this action in the Federal District Court in New York. Section 11 of the Judiciary Act of 1789, 1 Stat. 78, carried over into the Judicial Code, § 24, 28 U. S. C. § 41 (1), confers jurisdiction upon federal district courts of all actions at law between citizens of different states. The Court does not suggest that the federal district court in New York lacks jurisdiction under this statute or that the venue was improper in this case. 28 U. S. C. § 112. Cf. Neirbo Co. v. Bethlehem Corp., 308 U. S. 165. But it holds that a district court may abdicate its jurisdiction when a defendant shows to the satisfaction of a district court that it would be more convenient and less vexatious for the defendant if the trial were held in another jurisdiction. Neither the venue statute nor the statute which has governed jurisdiction since 1789 contains any indication or implication that a federal district court, once satisfied that jurisdiction and venue requirements have been met, may decline to exercise its jurisdiction. Except in relation to the exercise of the extraordinary admiralty and equity powers of district courts, this Court has never before held contrary to the general principle that “the courts of the United States are bound to proceed to judgment, and to afford redress to suitors before them, in every case to which their jurisdiction extends. They cannot abdicate their authority or duty in any case in favor of another jurisdiction.” Hyde v. Stone, 20 How. 170, 175, quoted with approval in Chicot County v. Sherwood, 148 U. S. 529, 534. See also Dennick v. Railroad Co., 103 U. S. 11; Baltimore & O. R. Co. v. Kepner, 314 U. S. 44; Evey v. Mexican C. R. Co., 81 F. 294.¹ Never until today has this Court held, in actions for money damages for violations of common law or statutory rights, that a district court can abdicate its statutory duty to exercise its jurisdiction for the alleged convenience of the defendant to a lawsuit. Compare Slater v. Mexican National R. Co., 194 U.S. 120.

For reasons peculiar to the special problems of admiralty and to the extraordinary remedies of equity, the courts exercising admiralty and equity powers have been permitted at times to decline to exercise their jurisdiction. Canada Malting Co. v. Paterson S. S. Co., 285 U. S. 413; Rogers v. Guaranty Trust Co., 288 U. S. 123; cf. Williams v. Green Bay & W. R. Co., 326 U. S. 549. This exception is rooted in the kind of relief which these courts grant and the kinds of problems which they solve. See Meredith v. Winter Haven, 320 U. S. 228, 235; Burford v. Sun Oil Co., 319 U. S. 315, 333 n. 29. Courts of equity developed to afford relief where a money judgment in the common law courts provided no adequate remedy for an injured person.² From the beginning of equitable jurisdiction up to now, the chancery courts have generally granted or withheld their special remedies at their discretion; and “courts of admiralty . . . act upon enlarged principles of equity.” O’Brien v. Miller, 168 U. S. 287, 297. But this Court has, on many occasions, severely restricted the discretion of district courts to decline to grant even the extraordinary equitable remedies. Meredith v. Winter Haven, supra, and cases there cited at 234, 235. Previously federal courts have not generally been allowed the broad and indefinite discretion to dispose even of equity cases solely on a trial court’s judgment of the relative convenience of the forum for the parties themselves. For a major factor in these equity decisions has been the relative ability of the forum to shape and execute its equitable remedy. Cf. Rogers v. Guaranty Trust Co., supra.

No such discretionary authority to decline to decide a case, however, has, before today, been vested in federal courts in actions for money judgments deriving from statutes or the common law.³ To engraft the doctrine of jorum, non conveniens upon the statutes fixing jurisdiction and proper venue in the district courts in such actions, seems to me to be far more than the mere filling in of the interstices of those statutes.⁴

It may be that a statute should be passed authorizing the federal district courts to decline to try so-called common law cases according to the convenience of the parties. But whether there should be such a statute, and determination of its scope and the safeguards which should surround it, are, in my judgment, questions of policy which Congress should decide. There are strong arguments presented by the Court in its opinion why federal courts exercising their common law jurisdiction should have the discretionary powers which equity courts have always possessed in dispensing equitable relief. I think equally strong arguments could be advanced to show that they should not. For any individual or corporate defendant who does part of his business in states other than the one in which he is sued will almost invariably be put to some inconvenience to defend himself. It will be a poorly represented multistate defendant who cannot produce substantial evidence and good reasons fitting the rule now adopted by this Court tending to establish that the forum of the action against him is most inconvenient. The Court’s new rule will thus clutter the very threshold of the federal courts with a preliminary trial of fact concerning the relative convenience of forums. The preliminary disposition of this factual question will, I believe, produce the very kind of uncertainty, confusion, and hardship which stalled and handicapped persons seeking compensation for maritime injuries following this Court’s decision in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 205. The broad and indefinite discretion left to federal courts to decide the question of convenience from the welter of factors which are relevant to such a judgment, will inevitably produce a complex of close and indistinguishable decisions from which accurate prediction of the proper forum will become difficult, if not impossible. Yet plaintiffs will be asked “to determine with certainty before bringing their actions that factual question over which courts regularly divide among themselves and within their own membership. As penalty for error, the injured individual may not only suffer serious financial loss through the delay and expense of litigation, but discover that his claim has been barred by the statute of limitations in the proper forum while he was erroneously pursuing it elsewhere.” Davis v. Dept. of Labor & Industries, 317 U. S. 249, 254.

This very case illustrates the hazards of delay. It must be begun anew in another forum after the District Court, the Circuit Court of Appeals, and now this Court, have had their time-consuming say as to the relative convenience of the forum in which the plaintiff chose to seek redress. Whether the statute of limitations has run against the plaintiff, we do not know. The convenience which the individual defendant will enjoy from the Court's new rule of forum non conveniens in law actions may be thought to justify its inherent delays, uncertainties, administrative complications and hardships. But in any event, Congress has not yet said so; and I do not think that this Court should, 150 years after the passage of the Judiciary Act, fill in what it thinks is a deficiency in the deliberate policy which Congress adopted.⁵ Whether the doctrine of forum non conveniens is good or bad, I should wait for Congress to adopt it.

Mr. Justice Rutledge joins in this opinion.

1 In Mondou v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 223 U. S. 1, 58, it was stated that: “The existence of the jurisdiction creates an implication of duty to exercise it, and that its exercise may be onerous does not militate against that implication.” Cf. Douglas v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co.. 279 U. S. 377, 388.

2 Although the distinction between actions at law and suits in equity in federal courts has been abolished by the adoption of the single form of civil action, Rule 2, F. R. C. P., see 1 Moore, Federal Practice (1938) c. 2, there remains to federal courts the same discretion, no more and no less, in the exercise of special equitable remedies as existed before the adoption of the federal rules. Neither the rules, the statutes, tradition, nor practical considerations justify application of equitable discretion to actions for money judgments based on common law or statutory rights.

3 This Court, whose jurisdiction is primarily appellate, has held that it need not exercise its constitutionally granted original jurisdiction even at common law where there is another suitable forum. Georgia v. Pennsylvania R. Co., 324 U. S. 439, 464-65. But the Constitution, not Congress, fixes this Court’s jurisdiction. And it was this Court’s duty to interpret its constitutional jurisdiction. It is the duty of Congress to fix the jurisdiction of the district courts by statute. It did so. It is not the duty of this Court to amend that statute.

4 “I recognize without hesitation that judges do and must legislate, but they can do so only interstitially; they are confined from molar to molecular motions.” Holmes, J., dissenting in Southern Pacific Co. v. Jensen, 244 U. S. 205, 218, 221. See also dissenting opinion, State Tax Commission v. Aldrich, 316 U. S. 174, 185, 202, n. 23 and authorities there collected.

5 The very law review articles which are relied upon to document this theory of a federal rule of forum non conveniens reveal that judicial adoption of this theory without a new act of Congress would be an unwarranted judicial innovation. Foster, Place of Trial—Interstate Application of Intrastate Methods of Adjustment, 44 Harv. L. Rev. 41, 52; Blair, The Doctrine of Forum Non Conveniens in Anglo-American Law, 29 Col. L. Rev. 1, 18. For instance, it is stated that “No matter how little dispute there is as to the desirability of such legislation, there is comparatively little chance of overcoming legislative inertia and securing its passage unless some accident happens to focus attention upon it. The best hope is that the courts will feel free to take appropriate action without specific legislation authorizing them to do so.” Foster, supra at 52.