Millet v. Godchaux Sugars, 16221.

• Decision Date: 08 February 1957
• Docket Number: No. 16221.,16221.
• Citation: 241 F.2d 264
• Parties: Norman MILLET, Appellant, v. GODCHAUX SUGARS, Inc., Appellee.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

241 F.2d 264 (1957)

Norman MILLET, Appellant, v. GODCHAUX SUGARS, Inc., Appellee.

No. 16221.

United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit.

February 8, 1957.

Benjamin E. Smith, New Orleans, La., for appellant.

Stanley E. Loeb, New Orleans, La., Boswell, Loeb, Livaudais, Gordon Boswell, New Orleans, La., for appellee.

Before RIVES, TUTTLE and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge.

A principle, repeated with remarkable frequency in the plainest terms of direct simplicity, and carrying with it a compelling sense of emphasis, has again been misread, misunderstood, or misapplied, requiring again its republication. For the District Court, indicating no basis for departure from the rule,¹ "* * * that a motion to dismiss for failure to state a claim should not be granted unless it appears to a certainty that the plaintiff would be entitled to no relief under any state of facts which could be proved in support of his claim * * *," Des Isles v. Evans, 5 Cir., 200 F.2d 614, 615, dismissed Millet's Complaint seeking Workmen's Compensation under the Louisiana Statute by testing it as would a Louisiana Court on whether it (i. e., the pleaded words) stated a cause of action and not, as must a Federal Court, whether evidence might be presented on which, applying Louisiana substantive standards, a recovery might be had.

This approach not unnatural to Court and counsel steeped in the judicial traditions of Civil jurisprudence, seems to assume that a suit for Workmen's Compensation, being a special statutory remedy, carries with it all of the trappings of the state procedure including, here, the requirement, LSA-Revised Statutes, Title 23, Section 1311, that the "* * * petition should set forth the * * * facts * * *" in a manner deemed adequate by a Louisiana Court. But this is not so. For in suits seeking statutory compensation, "It is settled law that neither the * * * state Statutes nor State rules governing practice and procedure in the State courts are applicable to, or binding on, trials in federal courts," Employers Mutual Liability Insurance Co. of Wisconsin v. Blunt, 5 Cir., 227 F.2d 312, certiorari denied 350 U.S. 994, 76 S.Ct. 543, 100 L.Ed. 859.

While perhaps inartfully drawn, the Complaint, making positive the relationship of employer-employee and claiming specifically benefits under the Louisiana Workmen's Compensation Act, did assert quite plainly that, while working for Godchaux Sugars, Inc., during March 1955, Millet became disabled by reason of a slight costo-chondral separation for which, beginning April 1, he was treated by the company doctor who discharged him April 13, 1955, with a recommendation that he be restricted from doing heavy work. It further set forth that on April 14, 1955, Millet returned to work and continued until April 22, 1955, when he became "unable to continue" further work. And, in categorical terms, it asserted that by reason thereof he had "been made permanently and totally disabled and * * * entitled to compensation under Louisiana law * * * Title 23, Section 1021 et seq. * * *."

But because the Complaint, reading:

"2. Plaintiff was an employee of the company in March 1955, engaged as a crystalizer foreman in the companies sugar refinery at Reserve, Louisiana, when he, gradually, over a period of days experienced an increasing inability to perform his work, accompanied by pain in the upper front region of his chest, which pain increased to such an extent, that on April 1st, 1955, he consulted the company doctor."

did not name or indicate a specific event or occurrence, the employer contended, and the Court, without opinion, apparently agreed, that this was not a sufficient allegation of "personal injury by accident"² arising out of employment.

This assumed, of course, that the plaintiff's proof would literally track the bare allegations and that all that such evidence would show was a disability at the end of March which, it was further assumed, would be insufficient under Louisiana law. But these assumptions are not permissible. For the Complaint "shall contain * * * a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief * * *," Fed.Rules Civ.Proc. rule 8(a), 28 U.S.C.A., and this forbids the prolix recitation of probable evidence. And it would be shutting out all judicial experience to expect that the versions from the witnesses would be that short, or sharp, or simple. And on the substantive merits, it was to assume that Louisiana, in all situations, requires some definitive event of an external fortuitous nature to satisfy the literal language of the Statute, note 2, supra. We need not — indeed, we ought not — here elaborate on the numerous cases for it is sufficient to say that Louisiana does not have any such rigid requirement. The distinctions between liability and non-liability may sometimes be scarcely discernible, extremely fine, and the nuances subtle, but the Louisiana jurisprudence recognizes that disability may yet be compensable with or without an untoward identifiable event if certain circumstances or conditions of employment cause or bring it about.³ What these circumstances are, what kinds of medical results are recognized depend on the minutiae of evidence to be developed, not on the lawyer's efforts to describe it in the stilted archaic language of a pleading.

The ruling was equally impermissible concerning the allegations that, returning April 14 for work, the necessity of his working long hours as a strikebreaker in a strike-bound plant under tensions and strain of armed guard operation subjecting him to condemnation in the eyes of striking fellow employees, produced a "mental aversion and neurosis related to his work * * *" so that he became "unable to return to his former occupation or to successfully perform work of a reasonable character."

Illustrating the hazardous process of finally disposing of a case on pleadings, the Court, sustaining the employer's contention, categorically construed this as an independent claim that an entirely separate and distinct disability was caused by being "compelled" to work as a strikebreaker.

But the literal words of the Complaint do not require this, and both by brief and argument here Millet makes it certain that his purpose was merely to set forth a general description of the circumstances...