Robert H. Jackson

“ It is clear that as an action to enforce the award the suit was not barred, and it must therefore have been the opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals that the statute barred the administrative tribunal from making an award on claims so old. There is no federal statute of limitations applicable to unadjusted claims which the Adjustment Board may consider. It is difficult to see how state statutes of limitations can restrict the power of the federal administrative tribunal to consider and adjust claims. ”

“ Employees here involved are agents at stations on the Seaboard Airline Railroad, who primarily are employees of the railway and secondarily of the railway express agency; they receive compensation from each employer. ”

“ Regrettable as the long delay has been it has been caused by the exigencies of the contest, not by the neglect to proceed. We find no basis for applying a state statute of limitations to cut off the right of the Adjustment Board to consider the claims or to absolve the courts from the duty to enforce an award. ”

“ This hoary litigation presents the question whether a carrier by contracts with individual employees made in 1930 could supersede or expand terms of an agreement collectively bargained between the employer and the union in 1917, in view of the provisions of the Railway Labor Act of 1926, 45 U.S.C.A. § 151 et seq., which was applicable when the controversy arose.
Petitioner was a union designated to represent certain crafts and classes of employees of carriers by railroad. ”

“ If, therefore, these claims are barred, it must be because the time occupied in their litigation before the Adjustment Board operates to defeat them. A state statute of limitations can hardly destroy a claim because the period of actual contest over it in a federal tribunal extends beyond the limitation period. ”