Clay v. Sun Insurance Office Limited/Dissent Douglas

by William O. Douglas

United States Supreme Court

363 U.S. 207

John CLAY, Petitioner,  v.  SUN INSURANCE OFFICE LIMITED.

 Argued: March 22 and 23, 1960. --- Decided: June 13, 1960

Mr. Justice DOUGLAS, dissenting.

While I join the dissent of my Brother BLACK, I desire to give renewed protest to our practice of making litigants travel a long, expensive road in order to obtain justice. Congress has created federal courts with power to adjudicate controversies between citizens of different States. They are manned by judges drawn from the local Bars and fairly conversant with the laws of their respective areas. They are equipped to decide questions of local law as well as federal questions. As we stated in Meredith v. City of Winter Haven, 320 U.S. 228, 236, 64 S.Ct. 7, 12, 88 L.Ed. 9:

'Congress having adopted the policy of opening the federal courts to suitors in all diversity cases involving the jurisdictional amount, we can discern in its action no recognition of a policy which would exclude cases from the jurisdiction merely because they involve state law or because the law is uncertain or difficuilt to determine.'

The situations where a federal court might await decision in a state court or even remand the parties to it should be the exception not the rule. Only prejudice against diversity jurisdiction can explain the avoidance of the simple constitutional question that is presented here and the remittance of the parties to state courts to begin the litigation anew. Some litigants have long purses. Many, however, can hardly afford one lawsuit, let alone two. Shuttling the parties between state and federal tribunals is a sure way of defeating the ends of justice. The pursuit of justice is not an academic exercise. There are no foundations to finance the resolution of nice state law questions involved in federal court litigation. The parties are entitled absent unique and rare situations-to adjudication of their rights in the tribunals which Congress has empowered to act.

Notes