Moore v. Illinois Cent Co

• Decision Date: 31 March 1941
• Docket Number: No. 550,550
• Citation: 61 S.Ct. 754,312 U.S. 630,85 L.Ed. 1089
• Parties: MOORE v. ILLINOIS CENT. R. CO
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

312 U.S. 630

61 S.Ct. 754

85 L.Ed. 1089

MOORE

v ILLINOIS CENT. R. CO.

No. 550.

Argued and Submitted March 12, 1941.

Decided March 31, 1941.

Messrs. George Butler and Garner W. Green, both of Jackson, Miss., for petitioner.

Mr. James L. Byrd, of Jackson, Miss., for respondent.

Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

We granted certiorari in this case, 311 U.S. 643, 61 S.Ct. 392, 85 L.Ed. —-, to review a judgment in which the Circuit Court of Appeals applied a Mississippi statute of limitations contrary to the Mississippi Supreme Court's application of the same statute to the same plea in the same case. Compare Moore v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 180 Miss. 276, 277, 176 So. 593, with Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. Moore, 5 Cir., 112 F.2d 959.

Petitioner Moore, a member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, brought suit for damages against respondent railroad company in a Mississippi state court, claiming that he had been wrongfully discharged contrary to the terms of a contract between the Trainmen and the railroad, a copy of the contract being attached to the complaint as an exhibit. Petitioner alleged that as a member of the Trainmen he was entitled to all the benefits of the contract. Judgment on the pleadings was rendered against Moore by the trial court. Upon appeal the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed and remanded. One of the railroad's pleas was that the contract of employment between Moore and the railroad was verbal, rather than written, and that any action thereon was therefore barred by the three-year statute of limitations provided by Section 2299 of the Mississippi Code of 1930. With reference to this plea the Mississippi Supreme Court said: 'The appellant's suit is not on a verbal contract between him and the appellee, but on a written contract made with the appellee, for appellant's benefit, by the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen; consequently, section 2299, Code of 1930, has no application, and the time within which the appellant could sue is six years under section 2292, Code of 1930.' Moore v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., supra, 180 Miss. 291, 176 So. 596.

After the remand by the Mississippi Supreme Court, Moore amended his bill to ask damages in excess of $3,000, and the railroad removed the case to the federal courts. The District Court, considering itself bound by state law, held that the Mississippi three-year statute of limitations did not apply,¹ but on this point the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed,² declining to follow the Mississippi Supreme Court's ruling. Calling attention to the fact that the Mississippi Supreme Court does not regard itself as bound by a decision upon a second appeal, the Circuit Court of Appeals (one judge dissenting) said: 'Since the removal of the case to the federal court this court stands in the place of the Supreme Court of Mississippi and with the same power of reconsideration.' But the Circuit Courts of Appeals do not have the same power to reconsider interpretations of state law by state courts as do the highest courts of the state in which a decision has been rendered. The Mississippi Supreme Court had the power to reconsider and overrule its former interpretation, but the court below did not. And in the absence of a change by the Mississippi Legislature, the court below could reconsider and depart from the ruling of the highest court of Mississippi on Mississippi's statute of limitations only to the extent, if any, that examination of the later opinions of the Mississippi Supreme Court showed that it had changed its earlier interpretation of the effect of the Mississippi statute. Wichita Royalty Co. v. City National Bank, 306 U.S. 103, 107, 59 S.Ct. 420, 421, 83 L.Ed. 515; cf. West v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 311 U.S. 223, 61 S.Ct. 179, 85 L.Ed. 139; Fidelity Union Trust Co. v. Field, 311 U.S. 169, 61 S.Ct. 176, 85 L.Ed. 109. But the court below did not rely upon any change brought about by the Mississippi Legislature or the Mississippi Supreme Court. On the contrary, it concluded that it should re-examine the law because there was involved the interpretation and application of a collective contract of an interstate railroad with its employees. The court below also based its failure to follow the Mississippi Supreme Court's decision in Moore's case on the ground that in an earlier case the Mississippi Supreme Court had said that the three-year statute applied unless a contract was 'provable wholly by writing,' a situation which the court below did not think existed here.³ But even before the decision in Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188, 114 A.L.R. 1487, the federal courts applied state statutes of limitations in accordance with the interpretations given to such statutes by the states' highest courts. As early as 1893, this court said: 'The construction given to a statute (of limitations) of a state by the highest judicial tribunal of such state is regarded as a part of the statute, and is as binding upon the courts of the United States as the text. If the highest judicial tribunal of a state adopt new views as to the proper construction of such a statute, and reverse its former decisions, this court will follow the latest settled adjudications.' ⁴ It was error for the court below to depart from the Mississippi Supreme Court's interpretation of the state statute of limitations.

But respondent says that there is another reason why the judgment in its favor should be sustained.⁵ This reason, according to respondent, is that both the District Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals erred in failing to hold that Moore's suit was prematurely brought because of his failure to exhaust the administrative remedies granted him by the Railway Labor Act, 44 Stat. 577, as amended, 48 Stat. 1185, 45 U.S.C. § 151 et seq., 45 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq. But we find nothing in that Act...