Federal Courts. State Rule Holding Payment of Federal Judgment Attached in State Court a Valid Satisfaction of the Judgment Not Controlling on Federal Court

1940 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 231 ◽  
2007 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Vanneman

Basil Chapman retired from ACF Industries, a railroad-car maker, after thirty-eight years of service. In December 2003, he received an unexpected phone call at his West Virginia home from a union representative, who informed him that an ACF executive wanted to speak with him. When they spoke, the executive informed Mr. Chapman that ACF was planning on changing its retirees’ health coverage plan. The ACF plan would now have a lifetime maximum benefit cap on hospital and surgical expenses for each participant and would require retirees to make monthly contributions. According to court papers filed later, Mr. Chapman responded, “We have a contract. You can’t do that.” Then, he said that he would “file in federal court” against ACF. The next business day, ACF filed a declaratory judgment action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri asking the court to rule that retiree benefits were not vested and that ACF accordingly could alter benefits unilaterally. On January 26, 2004, Mr. Chapman, other named plaintiffs, and their union sued ACF in the United States District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia.


2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin C. Walsh

This Article challenges the unquestioned assumption of all contemporary scholars of federal jurisdiction that section 25 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 authorized Supreme Court appellate review of state criminal prosecutions. Section 25 has long been thought to be one of the most important provisions of the most important jurisdictional statute enacted by Congress. The Judiciary Act of 1789 gave concrete institutional shape to a federal judiciary only incompletely defined by Article III. And section 25 supplied a key piece of the structural relationship between the previously existing state court systems and the new federal court system that Congress constructed with the Act. It provided for Supreme Court appellate review of certain state court decisions denying the federal-law-based rights of certain litigants.


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