# Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc.

> Supreme Court of the United States · June 23, 1958 · 356 U.S. 525

URL: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9421615

## Case

- **Full name:** Byrd v. Blue Ridge Rural Electric Cooperative, Inc.
- **Court:** Supreme Court of the United States
- **Decided:** June 23, 1958
- **Citations:** 356 U.S. 525; 78 S. Ct. 893; 2 L. Ed. 2d 953; 1958 U.S. LEXIS 1029
- **Precedential status:** Published
- **Opinion:** Dissent by Harlan
- **Judges:** Brennan, Whittaker, Frankfurter, Harlan
- **Cited by:** 819 later opinions in the Frix Law Library

## Citator (automated)

- **Yellow flag:** Reported overruled on other grounds by Hanna v. Plumer, 380 U.S. 460 (1965) — not on the Supreme Court's list.
- Negative treatments: 1
- Distinguished by: 0
- Full citator and citing cases: https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9421615

## How later opinions describe it (automated extraction)

- holding that state procedural law must be applied where it is “bound up with the definition of the rights and obligations of the parties” but explaining that the balancing test is “whether the federal policy ... should yield to the state rule in the interest of furthering the …
- concluding that, considering the "strong federal policy against allowing state rules to disrupt the judge-jury relationship in federal courts[,]” federal court need not follow state rule, despite the countervailing “interest of furthering the objective that ... litigation shou…
- holding that plaintiff in diversity suit was entitled to jury trial even though negligence claim would have been tried by judge in state court
- holding that the allocation of decision-making authority between the judge and jury is “a quintessentially procedural determination” (citing Byrd, 356 U.S. at 538)
- holding that Seventh Amendment right to jury trial in federal court may exist even with respect to a state-created right and even when a state statute or state constitution would preclude a jury trial in state court

## Opinion text

Mr. Justice Harlan,
dissenting.
I join in Mr. Justice Frankfurter's dissenting opinion, but desire to add two further reasons why I believe the judgment of the Court of Appeals should be affirmed. As I read that court’s opinion, it held that under South Carolina law the construction of facilities needed to transmit electric power was necessarily a part of the business of furnishing power, whether such construction was performed by the respondent itself or let out to others, and that in either case respondent would be liable to petitioner for compensation as his statutory employer. Since there is no dispute that respondent at the time of the accident was engaged in the business of furnishing power and that petitioner was injured while engaged in construction in furtherance of that business, I do not perceive how any further evidence which might be adduced by petitioner could change the result reached by the Court of Appeals. In any event, in the circumstances disclosed by the record before us, we should at the very least require petitioner to make some showing here of the character of the further evidence he expects to introduce before we disturb the judgment below.

---

Source: Frix Law Library, https://www.frixlaw.com/law-library/cases/9421615. Public record. Not legal advice.