FIELDS v. WASHINGTON METRO. AREA TRAN. AUTH., 743 F.2d 890 (D.C. Cir. 1984)

VIVIAN L. FIELDS, ET AL. v. WASHINGTON METROPOLITAN AREA TRANSIT AUTHORITY, APPELLANT. ALFRED GEORGE FUTRELL.

No. 83-1186.United States Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit.Argued October 26, 1983.
Decided September 11, 1984. As Amended September 18, 1984.

Jordan S. Himelfarb, Washington, D.C., for appellant.

Milton Heller, Washington, D.C., with whom William G. Applestein, Washington, D.C., was on the brief, for appellees.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Columbia (Civil Action No. 82-00393).

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Before WRIGHT[*] , TAMM, Circuit Judges, and MacKINNON, Senior Circuit Judge.

Opinion for the Court filed by Senior Circuit Judge MacKINNON.

MacKINNON, Senior Circuit Judge:

[1] This is a personal injury action arising out of a bus accident in the District of Columbia. By consent of the opposing parties, plaintiff’s suit in the United States District Court was referred to a United States magistrate for trial by jury, to be followed by entry of judgment on the order of the magistrate. The jury awarded substantial verdicts against defendant, who now appeals on the sole ground that the magistrate erred in denying a motion for a new trial based on the alleged excessiveness of the jury awards to plaintiffs.

[2] Prior to deciding the merits issue on appeal, we must first confront the basic question of our jurisdiction to decide the case — whether trial of this case before the magistrate, pursuant to the Magistrates Act and with the consent of the parties, as required by said Act, was inconsistent with the command of Article III that the federal judicial power be vested in judges who “hold their Offices during good Behavior.”[1] We conclude that, with respect to this action, the jurisdiction of the District Court was exercised in conformity with the Constitution. The procedure here employed — a reference authorized by statute and with the voluntary consent of both parties — was not offensive to the constitutional requirements with respect to the exercise of federal judicial power. On the merits, we cannot find the jury verdicts to be excessive, and therefore affirm the denial of the motion for a new trial.

[3] I. THE FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL RECORD
[4] The accident occurred on May 21, 1981, at a street corner in the heart of the District of Columbia. Mrs. Fields was a passenger on the Metro bus operated by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (“WMATA”).[2] Upon the collision, she was thrown to the floor of the vehicle. Mrs. Fields, a District of Columbia resident (Joint Appendix 38), sued WMATA in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia for personal injuries sustained by her in the accident. Her husband joined in the suit for loss of services and consortium. The causes of action asserted by plaintiffs were founded on the limited waiver of sovereign immunity found in Section 80 of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Regulation Compact (the “Compact”), as amended and adopted by Congress.[3]
No diversity of citizenship was alleged. Jurisdiction was based solely on Section 81 of the Compact, as adopted by Congress; that provision confers jurisdiction over tort suits against WMATA concurrently on the United States District Courts in the two states and the District, and on the state courts of general jurisdiction. Compact § 81;[4] see Qasim v. Washington

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Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, 455 A.2d 904, 906-07
(D.C.) (enbanc), cert. denied, 461 U.S. 929, 103 S.Ct. 2090, 77 L.Ed.2d 300 (1983) (holding that Section 81 confers concurrent jurisdiction over cases arising within the District of Columbia on the United States District Court and on the local court of general jurisdiction, the District of Columbia Superior Court).

[5] Pursuant to the Magistrates Act of 1979, 28 U.S.C. § 636(c) (Supp. V 1981),[5] and indisputably upon the express consent of all parties, trial of the case was referred by the District Court to the magistrate. By stipulation, defendant admitted liability; the only issue for trial was damages. The magistrate presided over a jury trial, and the jury returned verdicts in the amounts of $175,000 for Mrs. Fields and $50,000 for Mr. Fields. WMATA subsequently moved for a new trial on the sole ground that the verdicts were excessive. The motion was denied. In accordance with the Act,[6] the magistrate then ordered that judgment be entered in favor of plaintiffs. Defendant

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appealed directly to this Court, pursuant to the statute,[7] from denial of the motion.

[6] Prior to hearing oral argument, we ordered the parties to brief the jurisdictional question of whether the magistrate could constitutionally preside over the case and enter judgment therein. Having considered the parties’ submissions, including the brief of intervenor the United States, and in particular the relevance of several recent Supreme Court and federal appellate court decisions, we turn to the adequacy of the jurisdictional basis for the judgment entered in the District Court.

[7] II. THE CONSTITUTIONALITY OF THE MAGISTRATES ACT PROCEDURE HERE APPLIED
[8] The threshold jurisdictional question here is whether, upon consensual reference, a magistrate could properly try this case. We observe at the outset that six Circuit Courts have very recently addressed the general question of the constitutionality of Section 636(c) of the Magistrates Act, as that provision provides a procedure for federal civil cases. Those courts have unanimously concluded that the reference of cases to magistrates is constitutionally valid.[8] We agree.

[9] Several of those recent decisions examine in some detail the workings of references of federal civil cases to magistrates under the Magistrates Act;[9] rather than an extended discussion of those decisions, we will simply state the basics. Magistrates are appointed for eight-year terms by, and may be removed by, the federal judiciary in each district. 28 U.S.C. § 631(a), (i). The magistrates are paid by Congress, and they are not protected from reduction in their compensation. Id. § 634. Civil cases instituted in the District Courts of the United States come before magistrates only upon the voluntary consent of all parties, and local rules must ensure that conditions exist under which litigants may make a truly voluntary choice. Id. § 636(c)(1-2). District court judges may revoke references to magistrates under certain circumstances; thus, the federal District Court is required to exercise some measure of superintendance. Id. § 636(c)(5). Once a reference has been made, the magistrate has full authority to try the case, essentially in the same manner as an Article III trial judge would, and is empowered to “order the entry of judgment in the case.” Id. § 636(c)(1), (3). Appeal is directly to the United States Court of Appeals, unless the parties stipulate that an appeal may be taken to the District Court. Id. § 636(c)(3-4). Based on this outline of the Magistrates Act procedure in civil cases, there is nothing out of the ordinary in the manner in which this case proceeded.

[10] The jurisprudence on Article III jurisdiction is not, quite regrettably, the clearest of constitutional fields. One Supreme Court justice has referred to the leading cases as “but landmarks on a judicial `darkling plain’ where ignorant armies have clashed by night.” Northern Pipeline Co. v. Marathon Pipe Line Co., 458 U.S. 50, 91, 102 S.Ct. 2858, 2881, 73 L.Ed.2d 598 (1982) (Rehnquist, J., concurring in judgment). Notwithstanding that this case unavoidably presents some difficulty under such circumstances, we must uphold the District Court procedure in this case. We conclude that the statutory procedure for consensual reference of a case to a magistrate is not constitutionally defective. The courts that have faced up to the constitutional issues, unanimously upholding the Article III validity of the section 636(c), have produced well-researched, well-reasoned, and sound opinions. See supra n. 8. We do not presume to attempt to outdo

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their efforts. Instead, we merely state with approval our understanding of what those decisions hold, and beyond that, point to what we regard to be the strongest Supreme Court authority for upholding the constitutionality of the Magistrates Act.

[11] Read together, the extensive decisions of the First, Second, Third, and Ninth Circuits rest on two related propositions. First, once the jurisdiction of the District Court over the case has been established, the parties may freely consent to trial by an officer within the court who does not enjoy full Article III protections, without offending that constitutional provision See Goldstein, supra, 728 F.2d at 35-36; Collins, supra, 729 F.2d at 119-20; Pacemaker, supra, 725 F.2d at 541-44 Wharton-Thomas, supra, 721 F.2d at 926-28. In this circumstance, the litigants suffer no detriment to their personal interests, in the nature of due process rights to an Article III forum. Second, the degree to which magistrates are controlled by the Article III judiciary — both institutionally through appointment and general supervision, and more particularly through oversight by the district court judge of the individual magistrates’ handling of each case — avoids any violation of the separation-of-powers principles that underly the Article III protections designed to ensure an independent judiciary. See Goldstein, supra, 728 F.2d at 36; Collins, supra, 729 at 114-15; Pacemaker, supra, 725 F.2d at 544-47; Wharton-Thomas, supra, 721 F.2d at 926, 928-29. We agree fully that the requirement of the Magistrates Act that the parties freely consent to the procedure, along with the accountability of magistrates to the Article III judiciary, avoid any constitutional infirmity. This statute is thus sharply distinguishable from the jurisdictional scheme of the Bankruptcy Act of 1978, involving similarly nontenured judges, that was recently struck down as violative of Article III. See Northern Pipeline, supra.[10]

[12] We have no doubt that our decision today, along with those of the six circuits that have previously considered this issue, is ultimately consistent with Article III jurisprudence, sprawling though that body of case law might at times appear. While agreeing generally with the citations of authority across the circuits, we wish to call particular attention to one Supreme Court case that has received varying degrees of consideration elsewhere, but which seems to us to be virtually dispositive of the issue. In Heckers v. Fowler, 69 U.S. (2 Wall.) 123, 17 L.Ed. 759 (1865), the Court approved a procedure, permitted by the rules of the United States Circuit Court, under which the litigants freely consented that the case would be assigned to a referee for trial. According to the parties’ stipulation, judgment was to be entered by the clerk directly upon the referee’s report of his decision, without any intervening presentation to the 1864 circuit trial judge. Id. at 133. That consensual procedure, virtually identical to that here in issue, was followed, and thereafter was unanimously approved by the Court. The Supreme Court has never indicated any question as to the continuing vitality of its decision in Heckers, which therefore stands as good law today.[11] If such practice may be authorized by a court rule, then surely it

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may be authorized by a carefully drafted federal statute, particularly when Congress has carefully weighed the need for improvement of judicial efficiency, and has also been very attentive to the constitutional dimensions of the interests at stake.[12] By virtue of the Heckers precedent, we believe ourselves bound to uphold Section 636(c) of the Magistrates Act.[13]

[13] III. THE MERITS
[14] We now turn to the substantive issue upon which WMATA appealed — the alleged excessiveness of the verdicts. Our review in such cases is limited to instances where the amounts are so grossly excessive that the decision of the trial judge (or magistrate) to let them stand amounts to an abuse of discretion. See Taylor v. Washington Terminal Co., 409 F.2d 145, 148 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 396 U.S. 835, 90 S.Ct. 93, 24 L.Ed.2d 85 (1969) Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij N.V. KLM v. Tuller, 292 F.2d 775 (D.C. Cir.), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 921, 82 S.Ct. 243, 7 L.Ed.2d 136 (1961). Appellant concedes the applicability of this standard, but argues that even under this stringent test, the evidence before the District Court could not sustain the verdicts. We have reviewed the record of this case — in particular the testimony of the plaintiffs, of Virgie Nichols, and of the medical experts — and can find no substantial discrepancy between the testimony and the jury’s awards. The amount of damages was for the jury to decide, which it did within permissible legal bounds. Accordingly, we affirm the judgment of the District Court in all respects.

[15] Judgment accordingly.