Civil Procedure Class Notes
Still
in
Wright
thinks it’s hard; Yeazell thinks it’s not so hard.
Erie, the case, isn’t really difficult at
all. It’s all about interpreting the
phrase “the laws of the several states”.
Justice Story said that “laws” meant “statutes”. This was overturned by Erie: from now on, in diversity cases,
the federal district court will apply the law of the state in which the court
sits, and “the law” includes both statutes and court decisions.
Brandeis
said that part of the point of Swift was to promote uniformity in law.
It turned out there was actually less uniformity.
Brandeis also said that Swift
was discriminatory. Take, for example:
Brown & Yellow Taxicab
Co. v. Black & White Taxicab Co.
Brown & Yellow wants an exclusive contract to
serve the railroad. Black & White
tries to bust in, knowing that the contract was no good under
This is bad forum shopping! This is unfair! We don’t want this to happen anymore.
What’s unconstitutional?
Brandeis also says that something is unconstitutional. But what? Is the RDA unconstitutional? Nope, the decision says it’s still good. We still have it more or less unchanged
today.
Swift,
the case, was an unconstitutional result.
We don’t typically see the court go out of its way to declare something
they previously did as unconstitutional, but Brandeis does go out of his way to
try to ground Erie in constitutional
analysis.
Brandeis declares that there is no “federal general common law”. Congress can’t dictate common law to the
states. But is this
true today? Arguably
not. Take Taft-Hartley, for
example. It is a command to the federal court to develop a general federal
common law. But doesn’t this case say
that such a thing doesn’t exist?
We do have
federal common law. Congress can easily
use legislative tools to change the substance of state laws. All they have to do is coerce states (by withholding funds, for example) to
adopt statutes that Congress prefers.
We
no longer have to worry about Story’s limited view that statutes are the only
thing we mean when we talk about “the law”.
Erie as theory
Brandeis
suggests that Swift was based on a philosophy of Natural Law. What Brandeis represents, on the other hand,
is a legal realist perspective: “There is no law without some enforcing
authority.”
But
how does it all work? In most cases,
this won’t be very difficult.
A
and D get into an accident in
But
we’ve got problems! The Klaxon
rule says that the federal court applies the “choice of law” law of the state
in which it sits. This is a variant of Erie.
If the court really wanted uniformity, this is where it screwed
up. If there was one set of rules on
what law should be applied, it would give us a much greater sense of
certainty. Recall Piper and its complications.
Erie says that you must apply the “law of the
state”. But how do you determine what
state law is? If there’s a statute, that’s
what you apply. What if there is no statute? Where do you turn next? We look at the case law of the highest court
in that state. Even if they’re wrong in
the view of the United States Supreme Court, there’s nothing the federal courts
can do about it. That’s federalism
for ya.
Look
for statutes, then for State Supreme Court cases. But it’s probably not usually going to be
that easy. If there isn’t a definite
ruling from the State Supreme Court, the federal court must make their
1. Look at
intermediate appellate or state district courts.
2. Ask the State Supreme Court
directly by “certifying a question” of state law. Most state courts can accept certified
questions. (This is rare, because it is
discretionary.)
This
is where
But…Justice
Reed says that though the line between substantive law and procedure is “hazy”,
no one doubts that federal courts should be able to make their own procedure. Or do they???
It’s
hard to define the line between substantive law and procedure.
Here,
we’re talking about a statute of limitations which says “you can’t bring
such-and-such an action after such-and-such a date.” That sounds quite procedural, but it turns
out that it’s not.
This
suit was filed in
In
this case, we are looking at the statute of limitations. The defendant says we should apply the
The
lawsuit is filed in the Southern District of New York. Guaranty Trust moves for summary judgment and
they get it.
The
holding of the case is: Federal courts sitting in diversity must apply state
statutes of limitations.
That’s
all well and good and pretty simple, but that’s not the complicated part.
Why,
after Erie, is there even a
question about applying this standard?
Why did we have to have another Supreme Court case about this? Why would the litigants even have to raise
this issue?
Is
this really an
Also,
this case involves the application of a state statute which even under Swift
was always applied.
Some
people call this the York
doctrine, rather than the Erie
doctrine. They argue that York creates the mess. This is what is going to send us down the
road to repeated Supreme Court cases where something looks procedural, sounds
procedural, but it’s insisted that it’s not procedural.
How
do we determine under
We don’t
look at how states characterize their law.
We don’t go by the labels that states themselves supply. Just because something is, for example, in
the New York Code of Civil Procedure doesn’t mean it’s procedural.
We
also look at whether a statute deals with “manner and means of recovery” or
whether it deals with a “matter of substance”.
We want the outcomes in state or federal court to be substantially the
same. We want diversity cases to be
dealt with the same way in state and federal courts to discourage forum
shopping, which we don’t like.
Yeazell
gives the example of paper size. Is this
procedural? Not by the
outcome-determinative test because if you file on the wrong size paper, your
complaint will get dismissed. That is
surely outcome-determinative!!! This
seems ridiculous, but that’s the rule according to York.
Now you see why Erie is a mess.