protection of the state's interest, and we have no doubt but that the court can mould any decree it renders so as to safeguard the rights of all interested parties.

Fourth. There yet remains the basis upon which the court below affirmed the District Court's refusal to assess damages that the jurisdiction to exercise this power is discretionary, and that refusal to exercise the power was not shown to be erroneous. In considering this question, it is of no importance that dealing with petitioners' motion for assessment of damages would involve long and complicated hearings on issues inappropriate for decision by a three judge court. For as we have pointed out, the issues were appropriate for decision by the single judge of the district. There can be no question of that judge's right to deal with issues such as those here presented. Under long settled equity practice, courts of chancery have discretionary power to assess damages sustained by parties who have been injured because of an injunctive restraint ultimately determined to have been improperly granted. Russell v. Farley, 105 U. S. 433, 444 et seq.; Pease v. Rathbun-Jones Engineering Co., 243 U. S. 273, 279. This power is, as stated, discretionary; there are of course cases where the Chancellor might properly conclude that parties should be remitted to an action at law. But this is not one of those cases. If petitioners had to bring actions at law, each of the seventy-six respondents might have to be made a defendant in a separate action. There is a controversy between the parties as to whether or not all of these respondents could be sued or served in the State of Missouri; to be compelled to sue some of them elsewhere would work a hardship on the state. In addition to this, part of the damages for which petitioners seek recovery is made up of various items of cost and expense incurred in the litigation; if petitioners succeed on the merits, there might conceivably be serious problems raised by the

seventy-six respondents as to the portion of damages fairly attributable to each-a problem peculiarly appropriate to equity, and preeminently adapted to settlement by a single court. Here, respondents joined themselves together in order jointly to restrain petitioners; they executed joint bonds; and they invoked the action of equity which has traditionally exerted its power not merely to assess damages caused by improvident injunctions but also to prevent the harmful consequences of an unnecessary multiplicity of causes of action. The circumstances of this case call so strongly for an assessment by equity that we think the court erred in dismissing the motion for assessment of damages. And it is especially fitting that equity exert its full strength in order to protect from loss a state which has been injured by reason of a suspension of enforcement of state laws imposed by equity itself. The judgment of the court below is reversed and the cause is remanded for proceedings before a single district judge in conformity with this opinion.

Reversed and remanded.

MOORE v. ILLINOIS CENTRAL RAILROAD CO.

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT.

No. 550. Argued March 12, 1941.-Decided March 31, 1941.

1. A ruling by the state supreme court made on review of the first trial of an action on contract and determining the applicable state statute of limitations must be followed by the federal courts on a second trial, after removal, in the absence of any intervening change by legislation or by ruling of the state supreme court. P. 633.

8

Cf. United States v. Morgan, 307 U. S. 183, 197; Inland Steel Co. v. United States, 306 U. S. 153, 158; Arkadelphia Milling Co. v. St. Louis Southwestern Ry. Co., 249 U. S. 134, 145-146.

2. Although a state supreme court considers itself free, on a second trial, to reconsider and overrule interpretations of state law made on the first review, the Circuit Court of Appeals upon review following a second trial, after removal, is nevertheless bound by the state court's interpretations. P. 633.

3. The right of a workman to sue a railroad company for wrongful discharge is not dependent upon prior exhaustion of his administrative remedies under the Railway Labor Act. P. 634.

112 F. 2d 959, reversed; judgment of the District Court, 24 F. Supp. 731, affirmed.

CERTIORARI, 311 U. S. 643, to review a judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals reversing a judgment recovered by the plaintiff in the District Court in an action against a railroad company for wrongful discharge from employment.

Messrs. George Butler and Garner W. Green submitted for petitioner.

Mr. James L. Byrd, with whom Messrs. Clinton H. McKay, E. C. Craig and V. W. Foster were on the brief, for respondent.

Solicitor General Biddle and Mr. Robert L. Stern filed a brief on behalf of the United States, as amicus curiae, submitting views of the construction of the Railway Labor Act, as amended.

MR. JUSTICE BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

We granted certiorari in this case, 311 U. S. 643, to review a judgment in which the Circuit Court of Appeals applied a Mississippi statute of limitations contrary to the Mississippi Supreme Court's application of the same statute to the same plea in the same case. Compare Moore v. Illinois Central Railroad Co., 180 Miss. 276; 176 So. 593, with Illinois Central Railroad Co. v. Moore, 112 F. 2d 959.

Opinion of the Court.

312 U.S.

Petitioner Moore, a member of the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen, brought suit for damages against respondent railroad company in a Mississippi state court, claiming that he had been wrongfully discharged contrary to the terms of a contract between the Trainmen and the railroad, a copy of the contract being attached to the complaint as an exhibit. Petitioner alleged that as a member of the Trainmen he was entitled to all the benefits of the contract. Judgment on the pleadings was rendered against Moore by the trial court. Upon appeal the Mississippi Supreme Court reversed and remanded. One of the railroad's pleas was that the contract of employment between Moore and the railroad was verbal, rather than written, and that any action thereon was therefore barred by the three year statute of limitations provided by § 2299 of the Mississippi Code of 1930. With reference to this plea the Mississippi Supreme Court said: "The appellant's suit is not on a verbal contract between him and the appellee, but on a written contract made with the appellee, for appellant's benefit, by the Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen; consequently, section 2299, Code of 1930, has no application, and the time within which appellant could sue is six years under section 2292, Code of 1930." Moore v. Illinois Central R. Co., supra, 291.

After the remand by the Mississippi Supreme Court, Moore amended his bill to ask damages in excess of $3000, and the railroad removed the case to the federal courts. The District Court, considering itself bound by state law, held that the Mississippi three year statute of limitations did not apply,' but on this point the Circuit Court of Appeals reversed,2 declining to follow the

124 F. Supp. 731.

2112 F. 2d 959.

Mississippi Supreme Court's ruling. Calling attention. to the fact that the Mississippi Supreme Court does not regard itself as bound by a decision upon a second appeal, the Circuit Court of Appeals (one judge dissenting) said: "Since the removal of the case to the federal court this court stands in the place of the Supreme Court of Mississippi and with the same power of reconsideration." But the Circuit Courts of Appeals do not have the same power to reconsider interpretations of state law by state courts as do the highest courts of the state in which a decision has been rendered. The Mississippi Supreme Court had the power to reconsider and overrule its former interpretation, but the court below did not. And in the absence of a change by the Mississippi legislature, the court below could reconsider and depart from the ruling of the highest court of Mississippi on Mississippi's statute of limitations only to the extent, if any, that examination of the later opinions of the Mississippi Supreme Court showed that it had changed its earlier interpretation of the effect of the Mississippi statute. Wichita Royalty Co. v. City National Bank, 306 U. S. 103, 107; cf. West v. American Telephone & Telegraph Co., 311 U. S. 223; Fidelity Union Trust Co. v. Field, 311 U. S. 169. But the court below did not rely upon any change brought about by the Mississippi legislature or the Mississippi Supreme Court. On the contrary, it concluded that it should reëxamine the law because there was involved the interpretation and application of a collective contract of an interstate railroad with its employees. The court below also based its failure to follow the Mississippi Supreme Court's decision in Moore's case on the ground that in an earlier case the Mississippi Supreme Court had said that the three year statute applied unless a contract was "wholly provable in writing," a situation which the court below did not think existed