Source: https://openjurist.org/291/us/315
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 00:49:55+00:00

Document:
JOE GERRICK & CO. et al.
Messrs. M. M. Doyle, of Washington, D.C., and William Martin, of Seattle, Wash., for petitioner.
Messrs. Roszel C. Thomsen and Walter L. Clark, both of Baltimore, Md., for respondents.
In the petition for certiorari it is asserted that the state courts misconstrued the Act of Congress of February 1, 1928 (16 USCA § 457). This court consequently has jurisdiction. The question of the bearing of the federal act upon the right to maintain the action requires the statement of additional facts.
The petitioner, believing this act of Congress made the state compensation law applicable to the navy yard, sued on behalf of her child and herself as beneficiaries, alleging the respondents had failed to report the work and make the payments required by the compensation act.
The state Supreme Court held that the compensation act does not apply to territory beyond the authority of the state Legislature. But it also held that act could not have any force in the navy yard, since it was adopted many years after the cession of jurisdiction by the state and the consequent acquisition of the tract by the United States. In this the court was clearly right. After the effective date of the state's cession the jurisdiction of the federal government was exclusive (Fort Leavenworth R.R. Co. v. Lowe, 114 U.S. 525, 537, 5 S.Ct. 995, 29 L.Ed. 264; United States v. Unzeuta, 281 U.S. 138, 50 S.Ct. 284, 74 L.Ed. 761), and laws subsequently enacted by the state were ineffective in the navy yard. Arlington Hotel Co. v. Fant, 278 U.S. 439, 49 S.Ct. 227, 73 L.Ed. 447. Congress may, however, adopt such later state legislation as respects territory under its jurisdiction, and the petitioner claims it did so adopt the compensation act by the Act of February 1, 1928. This argument overlooks the fact that the federal statute referred only to actions at law, where as the state act abolished all actions at law for negligence and substituted a system by which employers contribute to a fund to which injured workmen must look for compensation. The right of action given upon default of the employer in respect of his obligation to contribute to the fund is conferred as a part of the scheme of state insurance and not otherwise. The act of Congress vested in Murray no right to sue the respondents, had he survived his injury. Nor did it authorize the state of Washington to collect assessments for its state fund from an employer conducting work in the navy yard. If it were held that beneficiaries may sue, pursuant to the compensation law, we should have the incongruous situation that this law is in part effective and in part ineffective within the area under the jurisdiction of the federal government. Congress did not intend such a result. On the contrary, the purpose was only to authorize suits under a state statute abolishing the common law rule that the death of the injured person abates the action for negligence.
The petitioner urges that if the act of Congress failed to extend the workmen's compensation law to the navy yard, she is, nevertheless, entitled to maintain her action in behalf of herself and her child as heirs of the decedent, because the Code of 1881, supra, was in effect at the date of cession and remained applicable until Congress altered it. She relies upon the principle that when political jurisdiction and legislative power over territory are transferred from one sovereign to another, the municipal law of the place continues in force until abrogated by the new sovereign. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Co. v. McGlinn, 114 U.S. 542, 5 S.Ct. 1005, 29 L.Ed. 270; Vilas v. Manila, 220 U.S. 345, 357, 31 S.Ct. 416, 55 L.Ed. 491. But the weakness of her position is that by the Act of February 1, 1928, Congress did abrogate the code provision as respects the navy yard by enacting that 'such right of action shall exist as though the place were under the jurisdiction of the State,' and 'in any action brought to recover on account of injuries sustained in any such place the rights of the parties shall be governed by the laws of the State within the exterior boundaries of which it may be.' This plainly means the existing law, as declared from time to time by the state; and Washington, by the act of 1917, has substituted for the action, given in the alternative to heirs or personal representatives by the Code of 1881, one vested exclusively in the personal representative. It results that the petitioner could sue only under the act of 1917.
172 Wash. 365, 20 P.(2d) 591.
Laws of 1891, p. 31; Remington's Revised Statutes, § 8108.
Section, 8, Code of 1881, Remington & Ballinger's Ann. Code, § 183.
Rem. Rev. Stat. Wash. §§ 7673, 7674, 7676, 7679.
Rem. Rev. Stat. Wash. §§ 183, 183—1.
Act of February 1, 1928, c. 15, 45 Stat. 54, U.S. Code title 16, § 457 (16 USCA § 457).

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 § 8108
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