Boggs v. Blue Diamond Coal Co.

• Decision Date: 08 September 1980
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 77-69.
• Parties: Jennifer BOGGS et al., Plaintiffs, v. BLUE DIAMOND COAL COMPANY et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Eastern District of Kentucky

497 F. Supp. 1105

Jennifer BOGGS et al., Plaintiffs, v. BLUE DIAMOND COAL COMPANY et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 77-69.

United States District Court, E. D. Kentucky, Pikeville Division.

September 8, 1980.

COPYRIGHT MATERIAL OMITTED

Rogovin, Stern & Huge, Gerald M. Stern, George T. Frampton, Jr., Washington, D. C., J. D. Lee, Madisonville, Tenn., Kelsey E. Friend, Pikeville, Ky., for plaintiffs.

Eugene Goss, Harlan, Ky., for Vera Galloway & Celinda Sparkman.

James D. Asher, Polly, Craft & Asher, Whitesburg, Ky., for Ethel Sturgill.

Foster D. Arnett, Knoxville, Tenn., Bert T. Combs, Tarrant, Combs & Bullitt, Louisville, Ky., Craft, Barret, Haynes & Ward, Hazard, Ky., Hudgins, Coulling, Brewster & Morhous, Bluefield, W. Va., Stratton, May & Hays, Pikeville, Ky., for defendants.

Cole, Harned & Broderick, Bowling Green, Ky., for intervenors.

BERTELSMAN, District Judge.

INTRODUCTION

This is a wrongful death action brought by the personal representatives of 15 coal miners, killed in a mine disaster, which occurred March 9, 1976, when an alleged accumulation of methane gas exploded. Plaintiff, Mary Coots, is the administratrix of one of the deceased miners. The defendant is a mining company, claimed by the plaintiffs to be responsible for ventilation safety within the mine.

The matter presently before the court involves difficult issues which are of great importance to the individual plaintiff in the case, and also raise significant questions of first impression and of constitutional dimensions affecting the administration of the federal courts.

The principal issue is whether, when substitution must be made of a new party for a deceased party, the time limits which must be met in effecting such substitution are controlled by federal law or the law of Kentucky. It comes before the court in the following manner.

FACTS

Originally, the personal representative of the deceased miner, Virgil Coots, Jr., was Geraldine Coots, his wife, who was appointed administratrix of his estate by the Harlan District Court. Subsequently, Geraldine Coots herself died on January 25, 1978. The present movant, Mary Coots, was thereafter, on October 27, 1978, appointed by the appropriate probate court administratrix of the estate of the deceased miner as successor to Geraldine Coots, and now moves this court, pursuant to F.R. Civ.P. 25(a), to substitute her as a plaintiff in this action. The motion for substitution, however, was not filed until May 4, 1979. The significance of this last date is that it is not within one year of the date of the death of Geraldine Coots, the original administratrix. The defendant objects to the substitution, contending that the Kentucky statutes¹ providing for such substitution have not been complied with by the movant.²

The movant argues that the one-year time limit imposed by K.R.S. 395.278 is not controlling, since it is contrary to F.R.Civ.P. (25)(a)(1).³

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Although more has been written about Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins⁴ and the ensuing history of the doctrine it announced than most other legal problems, the lower federal courts are still presented with thorny problems concerning choice of federal or state law in cases where jurisdiction is founded upon diversity of citizenship. The court is here confronted with such a problem, and finds little direct precedent to guide it in resolving the issue here presented.⁵ In attempting to resolve the problem before it, the court finds that the recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Walker v. Armco Steel Corp.⁶ requires a reexamination of the entire Erie problem as it affects cases of this kind, in which state law and a Federal Rule of Civil Procedure are in direct conflict.

In undertaking this reexamination, it is best to follow the method prevalent in modern cinema and television writing by starting where we are, and making use of a flashback to determine how we got here.

WHERE WE ARE: Walker v. Armco Steel Corporation

The most recent episode in the continuing drama of the development of the "Erie doctrine" is the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in Walker v. Armco Steel Corp.⁷ There, a diversity suit was filed in federal court before the expiration of the applicable Oklahoma statute of limitations for personal injury actions, but the defendant was not served with process until after the expiration of the limitations period. Under such circumstances, the Oklahoma statute provided that the action was not timely commenced. The plaintiff argued that the seeming bar of the state statute was overcome by the applicability of F.R. Civ.P. 3.⁸

The Supreme Court held that state law applied and the action was barred. Federal Rule 3 and the state statute were not in conflict, the Court reasoned, because Rule 3 purports to say nothing concerning the tolling of the statute of limitations, but provides for the commencement of the action only for the purpose of triggering time limits under the Federal Rules and the administration of the suit in the federal courts.⁹

The Court's opinion requires that a lower federal court, confronted with an issue such as that in the case at bar, must undertake a three-step analysis:

1. Is the scope of the Federal Rule, when given its plain meaning, sufficiently broad to control the issue before the court?¹⁰

2. If so, is the Federal Rule within the scope of the Rules Enabling Act?¹¹

3. If so, is the Rule also within a constitutional grant of power, such as that to be found in Article III of the Constitution, providing for the establishment of the federal courts, as implemented by Article I, § 8, especially the Necessary and Proper Clause?¹²

In Walker, the Court reached only the first step of this analysis, because it found that the scope of Federal Rule 3 was not sufficiently broad to cover the matter of when a state statute of limitations would be tolled. Therefore, the Court held, there was no conflict between the state and federal provisions. In the case at bar, however, there is a direct conflict between F.R. Civ.P. 25(a), which states that a substitution for a deceased party may be made within 90 days of the time the suggestion of death is made upon the record, and K.R.S. 395.278, which requires that such substitution be made within one year of the death of the original party.¹³

Therefore, to resolve the issue presently before it, this court must proceed to the second two steps of the Walker analysis. The Walker opinion affords little guidance as to how the analysis is to be made. While there is no shortage of pre-Walker authority, either in the form of court decisions or scholarly commentaries, it is conflicting for the most part. Therefore, it is necessary for this court to review the history of the Erie Doctrine for guidance in making the required statutory and constitutional analysis. This opinion will reexamine the Erie line of decisions, highlighting aspects of them which appear to be more significant in the light of Walker than previously.

HOW WE GOT HERE: Historical Background:

Erie Railroad Company v. Tompkins and The Rules of Decision Act

Any study of the state-federal choice of law problem in federal diversity of citizenship cases must begin with the Rules of Decision Act. Enacted in 1789 contemporaneously with the establishment of the federal courts, this important statute has remained in effect essentially unchanged since that time. Presently compiled as 28 U.S.C. § 1652, the Act reads:

"The laws of the several states, except where the Constitution or treaties of the United States or Acts of Congress otherwise require or provide, shall be regarded as rules of decision in civil actions in the courts of the United States, in cases where they apply."

Prior to 1938, it had been held that the term "rules of decision" as used in the Act only applied to statutes and not to the case law of a state. Known as the rule of Swift v. Tyson¹⁴ after the case first enunciating it, the principle was that in matters of general jurisprudence, federal courts were not bound by the case law of the state as declared by its highest court. Under the rule of Swift v. Tyson, the requirement of the Rules of Decision Act to impose state law was not considered to

"apply . . . to questions of a more general nature, not at all dependent upon local statutes or local usages of a fixed and permanent operation, as for example, to the construction of ordinary contracts or other written instruments and especially to questions of general commercial law, where the state tribunals are called upon to perform the like functions as ourselves the federal courts, that is, to ascertain upon general reasoning and legal analogies, what is the true exposition of the contract or instrument, or what is the just rule furnished by the principles of commercial law to govern the case."¹⁵

This was the background when the Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins case was decided on April 25, 1938. So much exegesis has been imposed upon the original scripture of Erie that the narrow holding of the decision itself has been to a large extent obscured. It is necessary to reexamine it now, particularly in the light of the specific requirement in Walker, supra, that constitutional analysis is required where a state and federal rule are in direct conflict.

The narrow issue in Erie was whether a federal court, exercising jurisdiction by virtue of diversity of citizenship, would apply state or federal law in determining the status as a licensee or a trespasser of a pedestrian who, while walking along the right-of-way beside a railroad track, was struck by a projection from a passing train. No constitutional issue was raised in the briefs of counsel.¹⁶ Nor was the rule of Swift v. Tyson questioned in the briefs. Rather, the parties argued for or against the status of the issue before the court as a matter of general or local law, as suited the interests of their clients. Nevertheless, the opening lines of...