Herb v. Pitcairn Belcher v. Louisville & N.R. Co , 324 U.S. 117 ( 1945 )

Mr. Justice Jackson

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Each of these petitioners has made an abortive attempt to maintain an action in a City Court of Illinois on a cause of action alleged under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. As their calls upon us for relief present the same questions, in granting certiorari we consolidated the cases for argument. 321 U. S. 759.

Herb alleged injury while employed as a switchman on the Wabash Railroad at or near the City of Decatur, Mason County, Illinois, on November 23, 1936. He filed complaint under the Federal Act in the City Court of Granite City, Madison County, Illinois, in December of 1937. A verdict of $30,000 was returned, which the trial court set aside. Further proceedings in the Appellate Court and the Supreme Court resulted in remand to the City Court. 377 Ill. 405, 36 N. E. 2d 555. On March 16, 1942, in other cases, the Supreme Court of Illinois decided that, under the Illinois Constitution, a city court is without jurisdiction in any case where the cause of action arose outside the city where the court is located. Werner v. Illinois Central R. Co., 379 Ill. 559, 42 N. E. 2d 82; Mitchell v. L. & N. R. Co., 379 Ill. 522, 42 N. E. 2d 86. When these decisions were rendered, plaintiff moved in the City Court for a change of venue, under the Illinois Venue Statute, to the Circuit Court of Madison County, a court of general jurisdiction. Meanwhile the two-year period within which an action could be instituted under the Employers’ Liability Act had long expired. The motion for change of venue was granted and the papers certified and transferred accordingly. The defendant, limiting appearance for the sole and only purpose of the motion, moved, in the Circuit Court, to dismiss on the grounds that the City Court had no jurisdiction either to entertain or to transfer the case; that, since all proceedings theretofore were utterly void, no action was pending or properly commenced by the City Court process, nor by the transfer; that, since no action had been commenced in a court of competent jurisdiction, any right under the federal Act had expired by its limitation, which provided that “No action shall be maintained under this Act unless commenced within two years from the day the cause of action accrued.” 35 Stat. 66, 45 U. S. C. § 56.¹ The Circuit Court granted the motion to dismiss and the Supreme Court of Illinois affirmed. 384 Ill. 237, 51 N. E. 2d 277. Its affirmance is here claimed to involve a federal question, erroneously decided.

Belcher alleged that he was a switchman on the Louisville & Nashville Railroad in its yards at Nashville, Tennessee, where he was injured on February 15, 1939. He filed his complaint on June 22, 1940, in the City Court of East St. Louis, Illinois. The answer joined issue generally and pleaded a release and satisfaction. Reply admitted execution in Nashville, Tennessee, of the document which defendant pleaded, but set up facts in avoidance. On trial a verdict of $20,000 was returned. The trial court set it aside, holding that the evidence did not warrant the verdict. This was on September 18, 1941, and at this stage of the litigation the Supreme Court of Illinois handed down its decisions of March 16, 1942 holding city courts without jurisdiction of causes arising outside their territorial jurisdiction. The plaintiff moved in City Court that venue be changed to Circuit Court of St. Clair County, Illinois, and the motion was granted. The statute of limitations on the commencement of the action at this time had run. Defendant made appearance limited to the purpose of moving to dismiss. The case was dismissed by the Circuit Court, and the dismissal was sustained by the Supreme Court of Illinois, in an opinion which adopted the opinion in the companion case. 384 Ill. 281, 51 N. E. 2d 282.

First. Whether any case is pending in the Illinois courts is a question to be determined by Illinois law, as interpreted by the Illinois Supreme Court. For as we have said of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, “we deem it well to observe that there is not here involved any attempt by Congress to enlarge or regulate the jurisdiction of state courts or to control or affect their modes of procedure, but only a question of the duty of such a court, when its ordinary jurisdiction as prescribed by local laws is appropriate to the occasion and is invoked in conformity with those laws, to take cognizance of an action to enforce a right of civil recovery arising under the act of Congress and susceptible of adjudication according to the prevailing rules of procedure.” Mondou v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 223 U. S. 1, 56-57. “As to the grant of jurisdiction in the Employers’ Liability Act, that statute does not purport to require State Courts to entertain suits arising under it, but only to empower them to do so, so far as the authority of the United States is concerned. . . . But there is nothing in the Act of Congress that purports to force a duty upon such courts as against an otherwise valid excuse.” Douglas v. New York, N. H. & H. R. Co., 279 U. S. 377, 387-88. And see Chambers v. Baltimore & Ohio R. Co., 207 U. S. 142, 148-49; St. Louis, I. M. & S. R. Co. v. Taylor, 210 U. S. 281; John v. Paullin, 231 U. S. 583.

. The plight of petitioners is not due to any failure of the State of Illinois to provide forums adequate for the hearing of their cases under the federal statute. The state provides a system of circuit courts sitting in each of its counties which have general and unlimited original jurisdiction at law and in equity. These were open to the petitioners, but they chose instead to file their complaints in city courts. It would not be open for us to say that the state in setting up a local court could not limit its jurisdiction to actions arising within the city for which it is established.

When the Supreme Court held these courts without jurisdiction, plaintiffs moved in City Court under the Illinois Venue Act (Illinois Revised Statutes, 1941, ch. 146, § 36) to change venue to the Circuit Court. The City Courts granted the motion and transferred the papers to the Circuit Court. The defendants were served with no process issuing from the Circuit Court, entered no general appearance in Circuit Court. Instead, appearing specially, they moved to dismiss. In each case the motion was grounded in a complete absence of jurisdiction in the City Courts to begin, hear, or transfer the case. Each defendant denied that the Venue Act gave any power to the City Court to transfer, and each claimed that if it did, it would be unconstitutional under the State Constitution. Both also asserted that the federal statute of limitations had run at the time of purported change of venue because no suit had been “commenced” in City Court within its meaning.

The Supreme Court of Illinois did not decide whether under the State Constitution the Venue Act was unconstitutional, apparently because it held the Act not to apply. It pointed out that “both the subject matter and the parties must be before the court, and jurisdiction of the one without the other will not suffice; the two must concur or the judgment will be void in any case in which the court assumes to act.” The Circuit Court had served no .summons on defendants, and they made no general appearance therein. On the other hand, the City Court admittedly had no jurisdiction of the subject matter. The Supreme Court used language which can mean that no valid proceeding was pending in either court as a matter of state law.² We think that the Supreme Court probably has decided that as matter of Illinois law no action is pending against these defendants in any court and that all of the proceedings have been of no effect whatever.

The freedom of the state courts so to decide is, of course, subject to the qualification that the cause of action must not be discriminated against because it is a federal one. McKnett v. St. Louis & S. F. R. Co., 292 U. S. 230. But we cannot say that the court below, in so far as it did hold the city courts without power, construed the state jurisdiction and venue laws in a discriminatory fashion. In Central Illinois Public Service Co. v. Industrial Commission, 293 Ill. 62, 127 N. E. 80, and Gill v. Lynch, 367 Ill. 203, 10 N. E. 2d 812, which are cited to us by petitioners, the Illinois court did uphold the power of one court to transfer a cause to another court for certain purposes. One case, however, involved a proceeding begun in a circuit court, a court of general and unlimited jurisdiction. It issued a writ of certiorari to review a decision of the state compensation commission; transfer was made under the venue statute to another circuit court because the review statute required the proceeding to be in a county where the defendant resided or could be found. In the other case a receivership proceeding was transferred from county court to the circuit court because the county court was without equitable jurisdiction. Thus neither case involved the jurisdiction of a city court nor the application of the venue statutes to a city court. Therefore, the cases are too dissimilar in their facts to make this one appear to be a discrimination against a federal right whether or not they are wholly consistent with some of the language in the present case. And there is no other basis, in the opinion of the court or elsewhere, for the intimation that if petitioners’ cases had been brought under state statutes or common law they would not have been dismissed under the same circumstances as those here present.

Had the Supreme Court rested upon its observations about the jurisdiction of Illinois courts and the adequacy of their procedures to bring an action into existence, we should be without power to direct these courts to try-cases which as matter of local law are not pending. But the Court did not stop at that.

Second. The case went to the Supreme Court of Illinois with a certification by the Circuit Court that a federal question was involved. The federal question, whether the action was barred by the federal statute of limitations, was raised by respondents in their motion to dismiss in the Circuit Court. In the course, of its opinion the Illinois Supreme Court used language from which it seems reasonably clear that the question was decided,³ either necessarily, because the Court had not disposed of the case on state law grounds, or hypothetically. For purposes of passing on this question the Court seems to have assumed that an action is pending under state law; for only if one is pending is there occasion to consider whether the cause of action is barred.

Petitioners contend therefore that the judgment below does not rest upon a state ground but upon an erroneously decided federal ground — namely, that even though the City Court had power to transfer the case, the action is barred because not “commenced” until it arrived in Circuit Court.

Third. This Court from the time of its foundation has adhered to the principle that it will not review judgments of state courts that rest on adequate and independent state grounds. Murdock v. Memphis, 20 Wall. 590, 636; Berea College v. Kentucky, 211 U. S. 45, 53; Enterprise Irrigation District v. Farmers Mutual Canal Co., 243 U. S. 157, 164; Fox Film Corp. v. Muller, 296 U. S. 207. The reason is so obvious that it has rarely been thought to warrant statement. It is found in the partitioning of power between the state and federal judicial systems and in the limitations of our own jurisdiction. Our only power over state judgments is to correct them to the extent that they incorrectly adjudge federal rights. And our power is to correct wrong judgments, not to revise opinions. We are not permitted to render an advisory opinion, and if the same judgment would be rendered by the state court after we corrected its views of federal laws, our review could amount to nothing more than an advisory opinion. If the Illinois court means to hold that the city courts could not adjudge, transfer, or begin these cases and that no case is pending in its courts at the present time, it is manifest that no view we might express of the federal Act would require its courts to proceed to the trial of these actions.

But what to do with cases in which the record is ambiguous but presents reasonable grounds to believe that the judgment may rest on decision of a federal question has long vexed the Court. . In many cases the answer has been a strict adherence to the rule that it must affirmatively appear that the federal question was decided and that its decision was essential to disposition of the case; and that where it is not clear whether the judgment rests on a federal ground or an adequate state one, this Court will not review. Klinger v. Missouri, 13 Wall. 257, 263; De Saussure v. Gaillard, 127 U. S. 216, 234; Johnson v. Risk, 137 U. S. 300, 307; Wood Mowing Machine Co. v. Skinner, 139 U. S. 293; Adams v. Russell, 229 U. S. 353, 358-61; Lynch v. New York, 293 U. S. 52.

In other cases where justice seemed to require it, for example because of supervening events, the Court has said that to set aside the judgment and remand the case to the state court for further consideration is not to re-yiew, in any proper sense of the term, the decision of the state court. Patterson v. Alabama, 294 U. S. 600, 607; State Tax Comm’n v. Van Cott, 306 U. S. 511, 515. And in Minnesota v. National Tea Co., 309 U. S. 551, uncertainty as to the grounds of the decision below led the Court to vacate and remand for further consideration. National Tea Co. v. State, 205 Minn. 443, 286 N. W. 360; 208 Minn. 607, 294 N. W. 230. In Lynch v. New York, 293 U. S. 52, the Court strongly intimated that had petitioners requested a continuance in this Court to permit an application to the state court for amendment or clarification of its remittitur, there would be power and willingness to grant it. Later, in International Steel & Iron Co. v. National Surety Co., 297 U. S. 657, 662, the record failed to disclose that a federal question had been presented or decided. Counsel requested at the bar continuance to apply for amplification, and it was granted. Re-argument was had in the state court upon the federal question, the court did pass on it, the further proceedings were certified, and this Court asserted jurisdiction and proceeded to decision. The practice has become common by which some state courts, such as the New York Court of Appeals, provide counsel on motion with a certificate of the court or of the Chief Judge that a stated federal question was presented and necessarily passed upon if such was the case. See, e. g., cases cited in Robertson and Kirkham, Jurisdiction of the Supreme Court, § 75.

It is no criticism of a state court that we are unable to say in a case where both state and federal questions are presented, discussed, and perhaps decided, that the judgment would have been the same had only one of the grounds been present. Those courts may adjudicate both kinds of questions and because it is not necessary to their functions to make a sharp separation of the two their discussion is often interlaced. But we cannot perform our duty to refrain from interfering in state law questions and also to review federal ones without making a determination whether the one or the other controls the judgment. And in cases where the answer is not clear to us, it seems consistent with the respect due the highest courts of states of the Union that they be asked rather than told what they have intended. If this imposes an unwelcome burden it should be mitigated by the knowledge that it is to protect their jurisdiction from unwitting interference as well as to protect our own from unwitting renunciation.

It is our purpose scrupulously to observe the long standing rule that we will not review a judgment of a state court that rests on an adequate and independent ground in state law. Nor will we review one until the fact that it does not do so appears of record. But because we will not proceed with a review while our jurisdiction is conjectural it does not follow that we should not take steps to protect our jurisdiction when we are given reasonable grounds to believe it exists. We think the simplest procedure to do so, where the record is deficient, is to hold the case pending application to the state court for clarification or amendment. It need not be elaborate or formal if it is clear and decisive in stating whether a federal question, and if so, what federal question, was decided as a necessary ground for reaching the judgment under review. In proper cases we may grant counsel’s request for continuance for the purpose. In proper cases we will impose the duty of applying for it upon petitioner or appellants upon our own motion.

These causes are continued for such period as will enable counsel for petitioners with all convenient speed to apply to the Supreme Court of Illinois for amendment, or certificate, which will show whether it intended to rest the judgments herein on an adequate and independent state ground or whether decision of the federal question was necessary to the judgment rendered.

1 An amendment adopted after tbe present causes of action accrued extended tbe limitation period to three years, 53 Stat. 1404, but no question of its applicability is raised and, in any event, in each case tbe transfer to the circuit court was made more than three years after the cause of action accrued.

2 “The question involved relates to the effect of the proceedings had in a court wholly incompetent to render a valid judgment, because if the judgment to be rendered would be void it necessarily follows the preliminary proceedings of the court, necessary to rendition of judgment, must likewise be void. If the court has no jurisdiction of the subject matter for judgment there can be no jurisdiction giving effect to process or pleadings.

“The fallacy of [plaintiff’s] argument rests in the fact that it becomes necessary to give validity to proceedings in a court, the judgment of which, if rendered upon such proceedings, would be wholly void. If the ultimate object to be obtained in a suit at law, viz., a judgment, is utterly void, it is difficult to understand how any of the preliminaries to such a judgment, such as summons, pleadings, interlocutory orders and the like have any effect, when the result, had such proceeding been concluded in the first court, would have been a nullity.

“. . . if appellant’s contention is sustained, a valid judgment could be obtained by transferring the cause to the proper court upon a summons or notice that defendants could safely disregard when served upon them. This would give the order of transfer by the city court the effect of vitalizing process that was void and considering a case commenced and pending in a proper court during a period when, in legal contemplation, no judicial control of defendants had yet been exercised.

“It is clear a suit was not commenced by filing the present suit in the city court of Granite City, or by issuing summons or filing a complaint. Lacking requisite jurisdiction because of the provisions of the constitution limiting it to cases arising within the limits of the city, such court was wholly incompetent to render any judgment or to authorize any proceedings which would result in a judgment.”

3 “The material point for consideration is whether the plaintiff has commenced an action within two years of the date of his injury in a court having jurisdiction to hear and determine the same, as required by section 6 of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act . . .

“. . . we observe recovery under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act is conditioned upon two things: (1) commencing an action within two years from the date of the injury; and (2) commencing such action in a court having jurisdiction to hear and determine the same. . . . The plaintiff having predicated his case upon the Federal Employers’ Liability Act must comply with its provisions, both with respect to the time of commencing the suit and of bringing it in a court having jurisdiction to hear and determine it.

“Conceding, but not deciding, that in proper eases a court without jurisdiction of the subject matter could by statute be authorized to transfer its proceedings . . . still the condition that the action be commenced within two years is not met . . . such statutes cannot recreate a right given under a Federal statute that has ceased to exist by the terms of the (Federal) statute.

“In this case jurisdiction of the suit was wholly lacking until July 31, 1942 (if we consider the change-of-venue act valid), and at this time the condition imposed upon the plaintiff with respect to bringing his suit had expired by lapse of time. This determination makes it unnecessary to pass upon either the constitutional question involved or the validity of the change-of-venue statute.” (Italics supplied.)

In the Belcher case the court said:

“Upon parallel facts, Herb v. Pitcairn, . . . decided this day, holds that an action is not commenced within two years of the date of injury in a court of competent jurisdiction, as prescribed by section 6 of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, by transferring the cause from a city court having no jurisdiction of the subject matter at a date when the action, if instituted originally on such date in the circuit court, could not be maintained because not commenced within the statutory time. Our disposition of the identical issue in Herb v. Pitcairn is decisive here.”