De Castro v. Board of Com Rs of San Juan

• Decision Date: 29 May 1944
• Docket Number: No. 349,349
• Citation: 64 S.Ct. 1121,322 U.S. 451,88 L.Ed. 1384
• Parties: DE CASTRO v. BOARD OF COM'RS OF SAN JUAN
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

322 U.S. 451

64 S.Ct. 1121

88 L.Ed. 1384

DE CASTRO

v BOARD OF COM'RS OF SAN JUAN.

No. 349.

Argued April 24, 1944.

Decided May 29, 1944.

Mr. William Cattron Rigby, of Washington, D.C., for petitioner.

Mr. F. F. Cuyar, of San Juan, P.R., for respondent.

Mr. Chief Justice STONE delivered the opinion of the Court.

In this case the petition urged as a ground for certiorari, which moved us to grant it, that the decision of the Court of Appeals below, as in a companion case, Mario Mercado e Hijos v. Commins, 322 U.S. 465, 64 S.Ct. 1118, 'practically closes the doors of the appellate court below' to appeals which the statutes of the United States allow to Puerto Rican litigants in the insular courts and 'discriminates in favor of the fortunate persons' who, through diversity of citizenship, can take their cases to the United States District Court for Puerto Rico,¹ instead of to the insular courts.

Petitioner brought the present proceeding by petition for certiorari in the District Court of San Juan, Puerto Rico, to review the action of respondents, the Board of Commissioners governing the City of San Juan, in removing petitioner from the office of city manager to which the Board had appointed him. The District Court of San Juan sustained the Board. On appeal the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico reversed the insular District Court and directed petitioner's reinstatement. 57 P.R. 149. On appeal to the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit under 28 U.S.C. § 225, 28 U.S.C.A. § 225 that court affirmed, 1 Cir., 116 F.2d 806, and this Court denied certiorari, 314 U.S. 614, 62 S.Ct. 61, 86 L.Ed. 495.

On the remand the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, on motion of respondents, entered judgment staying execution of its first judgment insofar as it ordered petitioner's reinstatement, on the ground that petitioner's term of office had expired in February, 1941, after the decision of the Court of Appeals on the first appeal. 59 D.P.R. 676 (Spanish Edition). Construing the applicable statutes of Puerto Rico in the light of the practical construction given to them by public officials and political parties of the island, and other matters of which it took judicial notice, the insular court came to the conclusion that 'the tenure of office of the City Manager * * * is that of four years, provided that during the same he observe good behavior'. On appeal from this judgment the Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed, 1 Cir., 136 F.2d 419. We granted certiorari, 321 U.S. 757, 64 S.Ct. 614, for the reason already stated and because some observations in the opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals have raised serious questions with respect to the appropriate rule governing decision of cases involving local laws, brought from the insular courts of Puerto Rico for review by the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and by this Court.

The Court of Appeals, in affirming the judgment of the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, pointed out that § 21 of Act No. 99 of 1931, which established the government of the city of San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico, provided that the city manager 'shall be appointed by the Board of Commissioners created by this Act and shall hold office during good conduct'. It said (136 F.2d 425): 'If we were free to take a wholly independent view of the point at issue we would be inclined to conclude that the meaning of § 21 is clear, and that the court below went beyond the permissible limits of interpretation in reading the clause 'and shall hold office during good conduct' as meaning that 'the tenure of office of the city manager of the capital is that of four years, provided that during the same he observe good behavior." But it felt constrained to affirm the judgment of the Puerto Rican tribunal by our decision and opinion in Bonet v. Texas Company, 308 U.S. 463, 471, 60 S.Ct. 349, 353, 84 L.Ed. 401.

In that case, in reversing a decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals, Texas Co. v. Sancho, 1 Cir., 102 F.2d 710, which had reversed the Supreme Court of Puerto Rico on a point of local law, we said, 'to justify reversal in such cases, the error must be clear or manifest; the interpretation must be inescapably wrong; the decision must be patently erroneous.' And since the Court of Appeals in this case was not prepared to say that the judgment now under review is 'inescapably wrong', and as it thought that this Court's statement in the Bonet case had reduced the duty of the Court of Appeals to the performance of a mere mechanical function, it felt compelled to affirm the judgment. It also suggested that, as the rule of decision applicable to appeals from the insular Supreme Court, as announced by the Bonet case, had not been applied in appeals from the United States District Court for Puerto Rico, different interpretations of local law might be established in the Court of Appeals, depending on whether the case was appealed from the insular court or from the United States District Court for Puerto Rico.

Our opinion in the Bonet case was the culmination of efforts by this Court, beginning with Garcia v. Vela, 1910, 216 U.S. 598, 599, 602, 30 S.Ct. 439, 440, 441, 54 L.Ed. 632; Lewers & Cooke v. Atcherly, 1911, 222 U.S. 285, 294, 32 S.Ct. 94, 95, 56 L.Ed. 202; and Ker & Co. v. Couden, 1912, 223 U.S. 268, 279, 32 S.Ct. 284, 286, 56 L.Ed. 432, to insure a review by the federal courts of decisions of the local courts of our insular possessions in matters of peculiarly local concern which should leave appropriate scope for the development by those courts of a system of law which differing from our own in its origins and principles, would nevertheless be suitable to local customs and needs. In thus interpreting the function of the federal appellate courts in reviewing decisions of the insular tribunals we only followed a principle which had long been established for appeals to federal courts from the courts of our territories within the United States.²

From the beginning we have recognized that the appellate review of insular cases was not given to the federal courts for the purpose of superimposing upon the Spanish law our common law preconceptions, except so far as that law must yield to the expressed will of the United States. Diaz v. Gonzales, 261 U.S. 102, 105, 106, 43 S.Ct. 286, 287, 288, 67 L.Ed. 550. Hence we have emphasized as a cardinal principle of review in such cases that the mere fact that our own system of law and statutory construction would call for the application of one rule to a given set of facts, does not preclude the adoption of a different one by the insular courts. See Waialua Agr. Co. v. Christian, 305 U.S. 91, 109, 59 S.Ct. 21, 30, 83 L.Ed. 60. If the rule thus announced by the insular court is one which is not plainly inconsistent with established principles of the local law, or in their absence is one accepted by the practice of the community, it will not be rejected here merely because it is not in logical harmony with the rules which we would apply to a community within the United States. It will be rejected only on a clear showing that the rule applied by the local court does violence to recognized principles of local law or established practices of the local community.

The guiding principle, which is incapable of statement in a short formula, has been variously phrased in terms which in every case must be interpreted in the light of the particular situation to which they were applied.³ But the principle which these phrases were intended to express has not been more accurately and comprehensively stated than by Mr. Justice Holmes in words which are completely applicable to the present case, in Diaz v. Gonzales, supra, 261 U.S. 105, 106, 43 S.Ct. 287, 288, 67 L.Ed. 550:

'This Court has stated many times the deference due to the understanding of the local courts upon matters of purely local concern. It is enough to cite (De) Villanueva v. Villanueva, 239 U.S. 293, 299, 36 S.Ct. 109, (111), 60 L.Ed. 293; Nadal v. May, 233 U.S. 447, 454, 34 S.Ct. 611, (612), 58 L.Ed. 1040. This is especially true in dealing with the decisions of a Court inheriting and brought up in a different system from that which prevails here. When we contemplate such a system from the outside it seems like a wall of stone, every part even with all the others, except so far as our own local education may lead us to see subordinations to which we are accustomed. But to one brought up within it, varying emphasis, tacit assumptions, unwritten practices, a thousand influences gained only from life, may give to the different parts wholly new values that logic and grammer never could have gotten from the books. In this case a slight difference in the caution felt in dealing with the interest of minors (Baerga v. Registrar of Humacao, 29 P.R. 440, 442), and a slight change of emphasis in the reading of statutes, explain the divergence between the Supreme Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals.'

Beyond the fact that common law judges in such cases are reviewing civil law decisions, it is of significance that considerations relevant for decision must be drawn from an environment unfamiliar to and far removed from that in which the reviewing court sits. That which is familiar and accepted in the island forum, in construing a statute or formulating a rule of law, may appear strange or unorthodox in a common law setting. In bridging gaps between legal systems having different origins and history, and governing two different polities, the rule we have announced has special importance.

Repeated admonitions that in cases coming from the Puerto Rican insular courts to the federal courts for review, where the Constitution or statutes of the United States were not involved, great deference must be paid to local decisions, having failed of their purpose, see Bonet v. Yabucoa Sugar Co., 306 U.S. 505, 307 U.S. 613, 59 S.Ct. 626, 83 L.Ed. 946,⁴ we restated them in more emphatic form in Bonet v. Texas Company, supra, 308 U.S. 470, 60 S.Ct. 353, 84...