Hanna
v. Plumer
380
Yeazell,
pp. 284-292
Facts: Hanna, from
Procedural
Posture: Hanna
served process by leaving documents with the wife of the executor, which
complied with the FRCP, but not
Issue: In a civil action brought
in federal court based on diversity jurisdiction, shall service of process be
based on the FRCP or on state law?
Rule: NEW(ish) RULE! Basically, Erie does not kill the FRCP.
Analysis: The majority writes that
the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure as adopted by the Supreme Court do not
violate the Rules Enabling Act, nor are they unconstitutional.
The
Court is trying to remedy a divergence between the Erie
line of cases and those construing the Rules Enabling Act.
The
Court finds that if there was no conflict with state law, the Federal Rules of
Civil Procedure would control, but Erie
presents a problem. The defendant argued
that the outcome-determinative test must be used, and under that test the defendant
would win immediately. However, the Court
says that the outcome-determinative test is not absolute. Erie is meant to remedy problems
arising from big differences between state and federal law, not tiny,
insubstantial ones. The Court
suggests that the difference between
Erie, according to this Court, has two goals:
1. Stop
forum-shopping, and
2. Avoid unfair
differences in administration of justice between state and federal courts.
The
Court says that the competing rules, though outcome-determinative, have little
or no relevance to the choice of a forum.
You wouldn’t decide to file in state versus federal court based solely
on the choice between these two laws.
The difference between the two laws also doesn’t raise any equal
protection problems.
The
Court further argues that Erie
has never been used to kill a Federal Rule. The Federal Rules of Civil Procedure have not
been held to be invalid, only not as broad as alleged and thus trumped in a
particular case by a state rule.
The Court says that the tests of Erie
and of the Rules Enabling Act are not identical. The nature of the Rules Enabling Act is that
it kills rules that go too far given the constitutional and Congressional
mandate. Nobody is allowed to write unconstitutional
rules. But Erie dealt with a
difference in law that was clearly
substantive, and didn’t kill the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.
The Court claims that Erie wasn’t meant to
curtail the power of Congress to say how things should run at a procedural
level in the federal courts.
Justice
Harlan, in a concurring opinion, proposes an alternative rule: the state rule
should prevail if “the choice of rule would substantially affect those primary
decisions respecting human conduct which our constitutional system leaves to
state regulation.” I don’t know what the
heck that means.
Harlan
objects to the rule made by the majority in that he feels that anything that
can reasonably be called “procedural” and put into the Federal Rules of Civil
Procedure will be allowed to control, no matter how much it screws up rights
granted by the states. Harlan finds that
this makes the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure too absolute.
Harlan
says that in the present case, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure should rule
because the effect of using them instead of the
Conclusion: The decision of the Circuit
Court of Appeals was reversed. The FRCP
live on!
Notes
and Problems
1. The federal
court could disregard the state rule because the Constitution grants power over
the federal courts to the federal government and Congress grants control of the
rules to the courts as well.
2. I was
wondering whether an alternative move here would have been to find the Rules
Enabling Act unconstitutional. What
would happen if the Rules Enabling Act were repealed by Congress?
3. We only apply Hanna
when a federal court would behave differently from a state court in the absence
of a competing state rule.
a. If the federal
practice is dictated by the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure or another federal
statute, that practice rules as long as the rule or statute is constitutional. It appears that there was precedent for
finding the REA constitutional.
Therefore, when you’re considering whether a federal court should apply
a rule, you must ask two things: (1) Is the rule okay under the REA in that it
is a rule of “practice and procedure”?
(2) Is the rule constitutional in and of itself? No Rule has ever been held unconstitutional
or in violation of the REA.
b. The difference
between federal and state practice is that the state practice would stop the
suit in its tracks, while the federal practice would let it continue. The federal practice is followed because it
is procedural and thus in the realm of the REA, and it is also constitutional
on its face.