Federal Courts: Choice of Law: Refusal to Apply State Limitation to Federally-Created Right (original) (raw)
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28 U.S.C. § 1658: A Limitation Period with Real Limitations
1993
Several centuries from now, when the archaeologists have unearthed a copy of the Federal Reporter and turned it over to the legal historians for study and analysis, our descendants will indeed be puzzled to discover that a society in which judicial resources were such a scarce "commodity" expended so much of that "commodity" searching its state codes for "analogous" limitation periods. I doubt very much that, at least in this regard, our priorities will command much admiration. Fixing the statute of limitation for a particular cause of action is a legislative function. Indeed, it is not a particularly difficult or complex legislative function. In most circumstances, it can be handled in a sentence. Yet, in a significant number of statutory schemes of nationwide application, Congress has failed to fulfill this basic responsibility and has left the courts to spend hundreds of hours-and thousands of dollars in government money-searching for a substitute solution. Meanwhile, justice is delayed, not only in the cases in which limitation issues arise but also in the many cases, often raising far more serious questions, which must wait while this tedious process takes place.' I. Tellis v. USF&G, 805 F.2d 741, 747 (7th Cir. 1986) (footnote omitted) (Ripple, J., dissenting), vacated, 483 U.S. 1015 (1987). 2. Id.; see also Garcia v. Wilson, 731 F.2d 640, 643 (10th Cir. 1984) ("In the face of Congressional refusal to enact a uniform statute... it is imperative that we establish a consistent and uniform framework by which suitable statutes of limitations can be determined. .. ."), aftd, 471 U.S.
European Review of Private Law
The different treatment of victims, in relation to limitation of civil actions for damages, depending on whether the fault causing the damage constitutes a criminal offence or not (Art 26 Preliminary Title of the Code of Criminal procedure), has the effect that a party who has suffered damage is in a fundamentally less favourable situation when the damage is caused by a fault constituting a criminal offence as compared to the case where the fault does not constitute a criminal offence. In those cases where the damage only becomes apparent after a long period of time, this leads to a serious limitation of the rights of the victim, out of all proportion with the interests which the legislator of 1878 and 1961 sought to protect, namely the right of the tortfeasor to put his past behind him, legal certainty and the public interest in avoiding a new disturbance of social peace and order where it has been restored in the meantime. These preoccupations justify specific periods of limitatio...
Determining Limitation Periods for Actions Arising under Federal Statutes
1987
Adams v. Woods, 6 U.S. (2 Cranch) 336, 342 (1805) (not providing a limitation period "would be utterly repugnant to the genius of our laws"). 2. Special Project, Time Bars in Specialized Federal Common Law. Federal Rights of Action and State Statutes of Limitations, 65 CORNELL L. REV. 1011, 1015 (1980). 3. Id. Under certain circumstances, however, a court may suspend or toll the limitation period. See generally 5 F. POORE & E. KOEBER, CYCLOPEDIA OF FEDERAL PROCEDURE § § 15.526-.529 (3d ed. 1968) (discusses circumstances in which a court may toll the limitation period). 4. The ability reasonably to predict the limitation is also important to the defendant, the judicial system, and society in general.
Federal Courts & Federal Rights
1979
In its 1977 decision in Atlas Roofing Co. v. Occupational ancl Health Review Commission, 1 the Supreme Court stated that the seventh amendment right to a jury trial 2 generally was inapplicable in administrative proceedings. More recently, the Court in Parklane Hosiery Co. v. Shore, 3 affirming the decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 4 found no violation of the seventh amendment by the application of the doctrine of collateral estoppel and thus determined that findings made in an administrative enforcement proceeding could later be used preclusively by a different party in a private legal action. 5 This Commentary asserts that the Atlas Court interpreted the seventh amendment without attempting to deal adequately with the text of that provision in light of its history, instead choosing to base its decision upon earlier Supreme Court cases themselves devoid of adequate historical analysis. 6 The Shore Court, while deciding against the claimed seventh amendment protection, arguably undertook an analysis that is an improvement over that in .>\.tlas. The Shore majority did not deal in detail with historical materials, relying, as did the Atlas Court, on earlier Supreme Court cases. The Shore majority, however, unlike Atlas, relied on an earlier opinion that had grappled with relevant historical arguments, and