Haile v. SUPERIOR COURT OF STATE OF DELAWARE

• Decision Date: 13 January 1975
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 74-168.
• Citation: 387 F. Supp. 865
• Parties: Vanessa A. HAILE et al., Plaintiffs, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF the STATE OF DELAWARE, Defendant.
• Court: U.S. District Court — District of Delaware

387 F. Supp. 865

Vanessa A. HAILE et al., Plaintiffs, v. The SUPERIOR COURT OF the STATE OF DELAWARE, Defendant.

Civ. A. No. 74-168.

United States District Court, D. Delaware.

January 13, 1975.

James P. D'Angelo and Edward T. Ciconte, Wilmington, Del., for plaintiffs.

Richard S. Gebelein, State Sol., Dept. of Justice, Wilmington, Del., for defendant.

Roger P. Sanders of Prickett, Ward, Burt & Sanders, Wilmington, Del., for amicus curiae.

Before ADAMS, Circuit Judge and STAPLETON and SCHWARTZ, District Judges.

OPINION

STAPLETON, District Judge:

This action attacks the Delaware Guest Statute¹ as violative of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The plaintiffs are alleged to be poor members of minority groups who have been injured in automobile accidents while riding as non-paying passengers in Delaware. The sole defendant, The Superior Court of the State of Delaware, is alleged to be "the designated Delaware Trial Court, . . . responsible for enforcement of" the Guest Statute. The complaint alleges that the Supreme Court of Delaware has sustained the constitutionality of the challenged statute² and that when suits are commenced against the negligent drivers of the vehicles in which plaintiffs were riding, the Superior Court, following the mandate of the State's highest tribunal, will deprive plaintiffs of their right to equal protection of the laws in violation of the Civil Rights Act.³ An injunction against enforcement of the statute by the defendant is sought, as well as a declaratory judgment. A three-judge court was requested and convened.⁴ Jurisdiction is asserted under 28 U.S.C. §§ 1331 and 1343.

The Court concludes that there is no "case" or "controversy" before it within the meaning of Article 3, Section 2, of the United States Constitution and that the complaint must be dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

For over 180 years it has been settled that the judicial power of federal courts is limited to the adjudication of actual controversies between parties having adverse interests. See Hayburn's Case, 2 Dall. 408 (1792). In the landmark case of Muskrat v. United States, 219 U.S. 346, 31 S.Ct. 250, 55 L.Ed. 246 (1911), the Supreme Court applied this principle in a case brought to test the constitutionality of a Congressional enactment. In that case, landowners attacked a federal law authorizing the Secretary of the Interior to convey property interests adverse to those of the plaintiffs. The suit was brought against the Attorney General of the United States pursuant to an enabling statute. In considering the validity of the enabling statute in light of the Attorney General's relationship to the matters at issue, the court held as follows:

. . . The judicial power, as we have seen, is the right to determine actual controversies arising between adverse litigants, duly instituted in courts of proper jurisdiction. The right to declare a law unconstitutional arises because an act of Congress relied upon by one or the other of such parties in determining their rights is in conflict with the fundamental law. . . . It is true the United States is made a defendant to this action, but it has no interest adverse to the claimants. The object is not to assert a property right as against the government, or to demand compensation for alleged wrongs because of action upon its part. The whole purpose of the law authorizing suit against the Attorney General is to determine the constitutional validity of this class of legislation, in a suit not arising between parties concerning a property right necessarily involved in the decision in question, but in a proceeding against the government in its sovereign capacity, and concerning which the only judgment required is to settle the doubtful character of the legislation in question. Such judgment will not conclude private parties, when actual litigation brings to the court the question of the constitutionality of such legislation. . . .

* * * * * *

The questions involved in this proceeding as to the validity of the legislation may arise in suits between individuals, and when they do and are properly brought before this court for consideration they, of course, must be determined in the exercise of its judicial functions. For the reasons we have stated, we are constrained to hold that these actions present no justiciable controversy within the authority of the court, acting within the limitations of the Constitution under which it was created. . . .

More recently, the Supreme Court has reiterated the test of justiciability in similar terms in a declaratory judgment context:

Basically, the question in each case is whether the facts alleged, under all the circumstances, show that there is a substantial controversy, between parties having adverse legal interests, of sufficient immediacy and reality to warrant the issuance of a declaratory judgment.

Maryland Casualty Co. v. Pacific Coal & Oil Co., 312 U.S. 270, 273, 61 S.Ct. 510, 512, 85 L.Ed. 826 (1941).

More specifically, the Supreme Court has observed in the context of an attack on the constitutionality of a statute:

No federal court . . . has "jurisdiction to pronounce any statute, either of a State or of the United States, void, because irreconcilable with the Constitution, except as it is called upon to adjudge the legal rights of litigants in actual controversies." (Emphasis by the court).

Golden v. Zwickler, 394 U.S. 103, 110, 89 S.Ct. 956, 960, 22 L.Ed.2d 113 (1969), citing, Liverpool, N.Y. & P.S.S. Co. v. Commissioners, 113 U.S. 33, 39, 5 S.Ct. 352, 28 L.Ed. 899 (1885).

While the rule requiring that the parties to litigation have a stake in its outcome is applied most frequently in cases where the plaintiff's standing is challenged, it remains true that federal courts lack jurisdiction in the absence of a defendant having an interest adverse to that of the plaintiff. E. g., Moore v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education, 402 U.S. 47, 91 S.Ct. 1292, 28 L. Ed.2d 590 (1971); Midland-Guardian of Pensacola, Inc. v. Carr, 425 F.2d 793 (5th Cir. 1970).

In the case presently before this Court, the Superior Court of the State of Delaware has no stake, monetary or otherwise in the outcome; it has no reason to defend. Plaintiffs do not challenge any practice or procedure established by Superior Court and it makes no difference whatever to the members of that Court whether or not they hereafter apply the Guest Statute to cases presently governed by it. Plaintiffs' claims are against individuals who are not parties to this lawsuit. Those claims can be adjudicated in a suit brought against those individuals in a court of competent jurisdiction. If defenses are asserted based upon a state statute which plaintiffs believe to be unconstitutional and that statute is otherwise found to be applicable, that court can pass upon the issue in the context of a concrete controversy between adverse parties, and an appeal will ultimately lie to the United States Supreme Court in the event of a determination adverse to plaintiffs.⁵

The absence of adverse interests between the parties to this lawsuit is highlighted in the context of the plaintiffs' current motion for summary judgment. At oral argument, the Court noted that there well might be a dispute as...