Supreme Court of United States

“ I must say that it appears to me to be a sort of unequal justice that would punish the plaintiff or even his lawyer for "earlier delays" which undoubtedly were due in major part to an erroneous ruling of the trial judge with regard to the sufficiency of the pleadings, a continuance of the trial brought about at the request of the defendant, and the several motions that the defendant's counsel made along through the years in connection with interrogatories and additional interrogatories which were to be used for no purpose other than to defeat the plaintiff's actively prosecuted lawsuit. ”

“ It may not be of much importance to anyone other than the plaintiff here and his family whether this case is tried on its merits or not. To my mind, however, it is of very great importance to everyone in this country that we do not establish the practice of throwing litigants out of court without notice to them solely because they are credulous enough to entrust their cases to lawyers whose names are accredited as worthy and capable by their government. ”

“ A district court does not lack disciplinary authority over an attorney and there is no justification, moral or legal, for its punishment of an innocent litigant for the personal conduct of his counsel. ”

“ The Court's suggestion that petitioner might have been able to file a motion under Rule 60 (b) "accompanied by a more adequate explanation for the absence of petitioner's counsel from the pretrial conference" is no answer at all to the problem presented by the plaintiff's lack of notice. Whether the lawyer had "a more adequate explanation" or not, I think the plaintiff himself is entitled to due process before his property is taken from him. ”

“ He has a right to rely at least to some extent upon the fact that a lawyer has a license. From this he is also entitled to believe that the lawyer has the ability to look out for his case and that he should leave the lawyer free from constraint in doing so. Surely it cannot be said that there was a duty resting upon Link, a layman plaintiff, to try to supervise the daily professional services of the lawyer he had chosen to represent him. ”

“ While there may be some clients sophisticated enough in the affairs of the world to be able to select the good from the bad among this mass of lawyers throughout the country, this unfortunately cannot always be the case. The average individual called upon, perhaps for the first time in his life, to select a lawyer to try a lawsuit may happen to choose the best lawyer or he may happen to choose one of the worst. ”

“ But there is no indication in the record that the defendant tried to get the interrogatories answered earlier. And every trial lawyer knows that the failure of a lawyer 641*641 to answer interrogatories designed to solicit answers to be used against his client before those answers are demanded by the party filing the interrogatories is nothing more than a normal trial tactic of a lawyer who is trying to win the case for his client. ”

“ Nor did the lawyer or the plaintiff receive any notice that a failure to appear at the pretrial conference would result in the drastic sanction of dismissal of the case. [10] And I think that nothing short of clairvoyance would have enabled either of them to anticipate that this Court, or any court, would approve dismissal of the case for "want of prosecution." ”

“ It is true, of course, that "the fundamental requirement of due process is an opportunity to be heard upon such notice and proceedings as are adequate to safeguard the right for which the constitutional protection is invoked." ”

“ Defendant's counsel makes no effort to rely upon want of prosecution as a ground for the involuntary dismissal. Obviously defendant is in no position to make such a contention, inasmuch as it caused the district court to vacate the order setting the case for trial on July 22, 1959, and continue the case. ”

“ Any other notion would be wholly inconsistent with our system of representative litigation, in which each party is deemed bound by the acts of his lawyer-agent and is considered to have "notice of all facts, notice of which can be charged upon the attorney." ”

“ When we allow the desire to reduce court congestion to justify the sacrifice of substantial rights of the litigants in cases like this, we attempt to promote speed in administration, which is 649*649 desirable, at the expense of justice, which is indispensable to any court system worthy of its name. ”

“ There is certainly no merit to the contention that dismissal of petitioner's claim because of his counsel's unexcused conduct imposes an unjust penalty on the client. Petitioner voluntarily chose this attorney as his representative in the action, and he cannot now avoid the consequences of the acts or omissions of this freely selected 634*634 agent. ”

“ The action, growing out of a collision between petitioner's automobile and one of respondent's trains, was commenced on August 24, 1954. Some six years later, and more than three years after petitioner had finally prevailed on respondent's motion for judgment on the pleadings (during which time two fixed trial dates had been postponed) , [1] the District Court, on September 29, 1960, duly notified counsel for each side of the scheduling of a pretrial conference to be held at the courthouse in Hammond, Indiana, on October 12, 1960, at 1 p. m. ”

“ But during this entire period of time, motions and activities of various kinds both by the lawyers and by the trial judge were taking place in the court. Certainly it would be impossible for anyone to suggest that the plaintiff Link 640*640 or his lawyer was responsible for the first three years of delay in the trial of the case. If responsibility is to be placed upon anyone for that delay, it must be placed upon the lawyers for the defendant and upon the trial judge. ”

“ Thereafter, the plaintiff failed to answer the defendant's interrogatories from August 17, 1957, until the day before the hearing on the order to show cause why the case should not be dismissed for want of prosecution—which was more than 19 months later. ”

“ The issue in that case was whether a plaintiff was entitled to recover interest on a refund claim for customs duties paid under protest. In holding that interest for a 29-year period during which the suit remained dormant should not have been allowed, Mr. ”