Rhodes v. Piggly Wiggly Alabama Distributing Co.

• Decision Date: 01 August 1990
• Docket Number: Civ. A. No. 90-AR-0839-S.
• Citation: 741 F. Supp. 1542
• Parties: Phillip N. RHODES, Plaintiff, v. PIGGLY WIGGLY ALABAMA DISTRIBUTING COMPANY, INC., et al., Defendants.
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Alabama

741 F. Supp. 1542

Phillip N. RHODES, Plaintiff, v. PIGGLY WIGGLY ALABAMA DISTRIBUTING COMPANY, INC., et al., Defendants.

Civ. A. No. 90-AR-0839-S.

United States District Court, N.D. Alabama, S.D.

August 1, 1990.

James E. Vann, Birmingham, Ala., for Phillip N. Rhodes.

Mark L. Taliaferro, Jr., A. Brand Walton, Jr., Dent Miller Morton, Burr & Forman, Birmingham, Ala., for Piggly Wiggly Alabama Distributing Co., Inc.

MEMORANDUM OPINION

ACKER, District Judge.

Defendants, Piggly Wiggly Alabama Distributing Company, Inc., and Health Benefit Plan for the Employees of Piggly Wiggly Alabama Distributing Company, Inc., have filed a motion to strike the jury demand which plaintiff, Phillip N. Rhodes, filed with his action brought pursuant to § 502(a)(1) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(1). This is a relatively simple and straightforward claim by an employee beneficiary under an ERISA employee benefit plan for benefits allegedly due him. Thus, if Chilton v. Savannah Foods and Industries, 814 F.2d 620 (11th Cir.1987), still represents the law of the Eleventh Circuit, defendants' motion to strike the jury demand should be granted. If, however, the net effect of Supreme Court decisions after Chilton is to recognize the right of jury trial in ERISA claims for benefits due, the motion should be denied.

In Whitt v. Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co., 676 F.Supp. 1119 (N.D.Ala.1987), this court discussed the Seventh Amendment and ERISA at some length, and in the end only reluctantly turned from its original intention to grant a jury trial in order not to deviate from the then very recent opinion of the Eleventh Circuit in Chilton which recognized no jury trial in ERISA cases. It is what has happened to Seventh Amendment jurisprudence since Whitt and Chilton that causes this court to conclude today that the law now is what this court and other courts predicted it would be. See Whitt and Springer v. Wal-Mart Associates' Health Plan, 714 F.Supp. 1168, 1169 (N.D.Ala.1989).

It is unnecessary to repeat this court's arguments in Whitt, arguments to which it now re-subscribes. Furthermore, this court has thoroughly expounded its reading of the Supreme Court's post-Chilton decisions bearing on the availability of a jury trial in an action invoking a Congressional enactment not containing any provision for trial by jury and seeking relief which is not traditionally equitable. See Beesley v. The Hartford Fire Insurance Company, 717 F.Supp. 781 (N.D.Ala.1989), reconsidered at 723 F.Supp. 635 (N.D.Ala.1989); Walton v. Cowin Equipment Co., Inc., 733 F.Supp. 327 (N.D.Ala.1990); and Walker v. Anderson Elec. Connectors, 736 F.Supp. 253 (N.D.Ala.1990).

Since this court wrote Whitt in 1987, other courts began to recognize trial by jury in ERISA benefit cases brought under 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(1). In 1988, the Third Circuit acknowledged the difference between the relief provided in 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(1)(B), which is "legal," and the relief provided in 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(3)(A) or (B), which is "equitable." Cox v. Keystone Carbon Co., 861 F.2d 390 (3d Cir. 1988) (citing Tull v. United States, 481 U.S. 412, 107 S.Ct. 1831, 95 L.Ed.2d 365 (1987)). It remanded the case to the district court to determine whether or not the case was a simple suit under § 1132(a)(1)(B) "to recover benefits due under the plan" and thus carried a jury entitlement. Id.; see also Abbarno v. Carborundum Co., 682 F.Supp. 179 (W.D.N.Y. 1988); Gangitano v. Investors Life Insurance Co., 733 F.Supp. 342 (S.D.Fla.1990); Vicinanzo v. Bruschwig & Fils, Inc., 739 F.Supp. 882 (S.D.N.Y.1990); and Porter v. Mutual Service Life Insurance Company, et al., CV 90-PT-700-S (N.D.Ala. June 26, 1990). The courts which entered these recent decisions and arrived at the conclusion that certain ERISA claims carry the Seventh Amendment right to jury trial, employed the same authorities which this court employed in Whitt, Beesley, Walton and Walker, except for Yellow Freight System v. Donnelly, ___ U.S. ___, 110 S.Ct. 1566, 108 L.Ed.2d 834 (1990), which was discussed only in Walker and in which the Supreme Court recognized for the first time that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction in Title VII cases. Even before Yellow Freight no one doubted that state courts have concurrent jurisdiction over claims for ERISA plan benefits under 29 U.S.C. § 1132(a)(1)(B). Thus, if a state court allows trial by jury in such ERISA cases, under the rationale of Yellow Freight can a jury trial be denied by a federal court in an identical case?

This court is particularly persuaded by the following penetrating observation by Chief Judge Brieant in Vicinanzo:

Perhaps because the right to a jury trial on claims of legal entitlement is so obvious, ERISA makes no express provisions for jury trials ...

739 F.Supp. at 885.

How can the right to a jury trial be so obvious to Judge Brieant and to this court when so many courts have scoffed at the idea of jury trial in causes of action created by a statute that is silent on the subject? This is a hard question. The answer probably lies not only in the judiciary's too often eagerness to do "what is right and necessary," but also in the judiciary's general lack of understanding of the crucial significance of the Seventh Amendment to the adoption of the Constitution.

It is universally understood that the Constitution of the United States would never have been ratified without the contemporaneous inclusion of its first ten amendments, including the Seventh Amendment. Perhaps it is not as well understood that the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure probably would not have been adopted without the inclusion of Rule 38(a), which clearly affirms the Seventh Amendment's guarantee of a trial by jury in matters involving a claim of legal entitlement. Ancient history may be more interesting than current events.

In England before the American Revolution, as well as in the thirteen colonies, the meaning of the term "jury trial" included not only the right of the jurors to determine where the truth lies but also the right to ignore the law as explained by the judge if the jurors should be persuaded to adopt other guidelines for decision. The great debate between the Federalists and the Anti-Federalists, leading ultimately to the incorporation of the Bill of Rights into the Constitution, included specific reference to the crucial importance of civil jury trials. The following Anti-Federalist criticism and expression of the American fear of trial-by-judge is found in an Anti-Federalist essay of 1787 entitled, "Observations Leading to a Fair Examination of the System of Government Proposed by the Late Convention: And to Several Essential and Necessary Alternations in It":

By art. 3 sect. 1, the judicial power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme court, and in such inferior courts, as congress may, from time to time, ordain and establish — the judges of them to hold their offices during good behaviour, and to receive, at stated times, a compensation for their services, which shall not be diminished during their continuance in office: but which, I conceive, may be increased. By the same art. sect. 2, the supreme court shall have original jurisdiction, "in all cases affecting ambassadors, and other public ministers, and consuls, and those in which a state shall be a party, and appellate jurisdiction, both as to law and fact, in all other federal causes, with such exceptions, and under such regulations, as the congress shall make." By the same section, the judicial power shall extend in law and equity to all the federal cases therein enumerated. By the same section the jury trial, in criminal causes, except in cases of impeachment, is established; but not in civil causes ...

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Their the jury's right to determine as to facts will not be disputed and their right to give a general verdict has never been disputed, except by a few judges and lawyers, governed by despotic principles. Coke, Hale, Holt, Blackstone, DeLome, and almost every other legal or political writer, who has written on the subject, has uniformly asserted this essential and important right of the jury. Juries in Great-Britain and America have universally practised accordingly. Even Mansfield, with all his wishes about him, dare not directly avow the contrary. What fully confirms this point is, that there is no instance to be found, where a jury was ever punished for finding a general verdict, when a special one might, with propriety, have been found. The jury trial, especially politically considered, is by far the most important feature in the judicial department in a free country, and

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