Link v. Wabash Railroad

Mr. Justice Harlan delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner challenges, from the standpoint of both power and discretion, the District Court’s sua sponte dismissal of this diversity negligence action under circumstances that follow.

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. During the preceding morning, October 11, petitioner’s counsel telephoned respondent’s lawyer from Indianapolis, stating that “he was doing some work on some papers,” that he expected to be at the pretrial conference, but that he might not attend the taking of a deposition of the plaintiff scheduled for the same day. At about 10:45 on the morning of October 12 petitioner’s counsel telephoned the [*628] Hammond courthouse from Indianapolis (about 160 miles away), and after asking for the judge, who then was on the bench, requested the judge’s secretary to convey to him this message: ‘That he [counsel] was busy preparing papers to file with the [Indiana] Supreme Court,” that “he wasn’t actually engaged in argument and that he couldn’t be here by 1:00 o’clock, but he would be here either Thursday afternoon [October 13] or any time Friday [October 14] if it [the pretrial conference] could be reset.”