Buchanan v. Rhodes

• Decision Date: 02 February 1966
• Docket Number: No. C65-159.,C65-159.
• Parties: Nathaniel BUCHANAN, etc., et al., Plaintiffs, v. The Honorable James A. RHODES, etc., et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Ohio

249 F. Supp. 860

Nathaniel BUCHANAN, etc., et al., Plaintiffs, v. The Honorable James A. RHODES, etc., et al., Defendants.

No. C65-159.

United States District Court N. D. Ohio, E. D.

February 2, 1966.

Richard M. Markus, Sindell, Sindell, Bourne, Markus, Stern & Spero, Cleveland, Ohio, for plaintiffs.

William B. Saxbe, Atty. Gen., William T. Bodoh, Asst. Atty. Gen., Columbus, Ohio, for defendants Honorable James A. Rhodes, etc. and other individual defendants holding office in State of Ohio.

John T. Corrigan, Pros. Atty., A. M. Braun, John L. Dowling, Asst. Pros. Attys., Cuyahoga County, Cleveland, Ohio, for defendants Frank M. Gorman, etc. and other individual defendants holding office in Cuyahoga County, Ohio.

CONNELL, Chief Judge.

The plaintiffs are litigants involved in personal injury lawsuits filed in the Court of Common Pleas, Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Their Complaint alleges that constitutional and statutory provisions establishing the judicial structure in Ohio, whereby each county is guaranteed at least one judge in the court of general jurisdiction (the court of common pleas), operate to deprive the plaintiffs of equal treatment under the law. They aver that the counties encompassing urban areas with larger populations, in particular Cuyahoga County, have fewer judges per population unit and that the disproportionate number of judges operates to their prejudice by causing them to wait longer for the completion of their litigation than litigants in smaller counties.

The genesis of this suit is the United States Supreme Court's dramatic reapportionment cases which require that the number of representatives returned to legislative bodies from political subdivisions within the state must be apportioned among the state's political subdivisions in relation to the population of said subdivisions. Our attention is especially directed to Nolan v. Rhodes, 378 U.S. 556, 84 S.Ct. 1906, 12 L.Ed.2d 1034 (1964), which struck down that provision of the Ohio Constitution which required that each county in Ohio have one representative in State House of Representatives. Plaintiffs here claim that as litigants in a heavily populated county, with one judge per 75,000 people, they are forced to endure a waiting period of some three or four years¹ while litigants in a smaller county may have a waiting period of perhaps one year, perhaps two years. Implicit in their demands here is the somewhat questionable premise that the sole² cause of this delay is the insufficient number of judges in larger counties and that the panacea for delay is an increase in that number to be effected by the apportionment of judges solely upon the basis of population within the jurisdiction which each judge serves. The plaintiffs' claim that the presence of one common pleas judge sitting in Vinton County, with its population of 10,000 people, secures for litigants in Vinton County a preferential treatment under color of law and deprives litigants in Cuyahoga County of an equal opportunity for speedy justice. We are asked to recognize a federal constitutional mandate, imbedded in the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids the operation of such a judicial system, and we are asked to convene a three-judge court to enjoin the further operation of that judicial system.

We are surprised that the plaintiffs would have us reapportion only the judges in the trial courts of the state. Should we not also reapportion the number of sheriffs and their deputies so that litigants in heavily populated counties will have an opportunity to secure quicker service of process? Should we not also reapportion the number of clerks of court and their deputies so that litigants in heavily populated counties will have more expeditious processing of the paper work involved in litigation? Since the prejudicial delay is also caused by a paucity of trial lawyers, shall we, considering lawyers as officers of the court (to satisfy the "state action" requirement for invoking the Fourteenth Amendment), reapportion their number among the eighty-eight counties of Ohio? And if this Court can affect the destinies of men by amending an entire judicial structure, what of mere brick and mortar? Should we not also reapportion the number of courthouses and courtrooms in the various counties?³ These questions supply their own answers.

The plaintiffs thus would plunge us headlong into that thicket of explosive political questions against which Mr. Justice Frankfurter so wisely warned us in Colegrove v. Green, 328 U.S. 549, 66 S.Ct. 1198, 90 L.Ed. 1432 (1946).

This case is presently before us for the consideration of two motions: the plaintiffs' application for the convention of a three-judge court and defendants' motion to dismiss. Ordinarily, it is neither the function nor the prerogative of the district judge to whom is addressed an application for a three-judge court under 28 U.S.C. § 2281⁴, to consider the merits of the plaintiffs' alleged grievance.

When an application for a statutory three-judge court is addressed to a district court, the court's inquiry is appropriately limited to determining whether the constitutional question raised is substantial, whether the complaint at least formally alleges a basis for equitable relief, and whether the case presented otherwise comes within the requirements of the three-judge statute. Idlewild Bon-Voyage Liquor Corp. v. Epstein, 370 U.S. 713, 715, 82 S.Ct. 1294, 8 L.Ed. 2d 794 (1962).

Where the allegations of the complaint, taken as true, fashion a grievance of constitutional proportions brought about by the operation of a state statute, § 2281 requires that the district court convene a three-judge panel. However, that section is inapplicable —

* * * when the claim that a statute is unconstitutional is wholly insubstantial, legally speaking nonexistent. * * * The reasons for convening an extraordinary court are inapplicable in such cases, for the policy behind the three-judge requirement—that a single judge ought not to be empowered to invalidate a state statute under a federal claim — does not apply. The three-judge requirement is a technical one to be narrowly construed, Phillips v. United States, 312 U.S. 246, 251, 61 S.Ct. 480, 483, 85 L.Ed. 800. The statute comes into play only when an injunction is sought "upon the ground of the unconstitutionality" of a statute. There is no such ground when the constitutional issue presented is essentially fictitious. Bailey v. Patterson, 369 U.S. 31, 33, 82 S.Ct. 549, 551, 7 L.Ed.2d 512 (1962).

Thus, when a complaint is patently without merit in law, as is the plaintiffs' here, a single district judge is empowered, as he is in every civil case, to dismiss the complaint for "failure of the pleading to state a claim upon which relief can be granted." Rule 12(b) (6) Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

The judicial system of the state of Ohio originates in the Ohio Constitution, specifically Article IV, where it is provided, inter alia:

Section 1. The judicial power of the state is vested in a supreme court, courts of appeals, courts of common pleas, courts of probate, and such other courts inferior to the courts of appeals as may from time to time be established by law.

and that (Section 3):

One resident judge of the court of common pleas, and such additional resident judge or judges as may be provided by law shall be elected in each county by the electors of such county; * * *. Any judge of the court of common pleas may temporarily preside and hold court in any county; and * * * the chief justice of the supreme court of the state * * * may assign any judge to any county to hold court therein.

And that (Section 15):

Laws may be passed to increase or diminish the number of judges of the supreme court, to increase beyond one or diminish to one the number of judges of the court of common pleas in any county, and to establish other courts, whenever two-thirds of the members elected to each house shall concur therein; * * *.

Ultimately, then, the allocation of judges in the respective counties of Ohio is left to the informed deliberation of the state legislature, as it should be, rather than with the inadequately informed discretion of the federal court. The problem of which the plaintiffs complain, and the difficulties inherent in its resolution, necessarily pose questions of a political nature which are not ripe for solution by the judicial process. The issues thus joined, therefore, are not justiciable.

While we recognize that a precise definition of that elusive term "political issue" is at best a semantic improbability and that the term is best described by example rather than by sweeping generalizations, there are enough consistently recurring characteristics to render the term definable. These are best summarized by Mr. Justice Brennan in Baker v. Carr, 369 U.S. 186, 217, 82 S.Ct. 691, 7 L.Ed.2d 663 (1962):

It is apparent that several formulations which vary slightly according to the settings in which the questions arise may describe a political question, although each has one or more elements which identify it as essentially a function of the separation of powers. Prominent on the surface of any case held to involve a political question is found a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political

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