Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/233/354.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 07:10:10+00:00

Document:
[233 U.S. 354, 355] Mr. Alexander W. Smith for plaintiff in error.
The defendant filed a plea in abatement in which it was set out that 6115 of that Code also provided that 'all actions under 3910 must be brought in a court of competent jurisdiction within the state of Alabama, and not elsewhere.' The defendant thereupon prayed that the action be abated because 'to continue said case of said statutory cause of action given by the statutes of Alabama, and restrictetd by said statutes to the courts of Alabama, would be a denial so far as the rights of this defendant are concerned of full faith and credit to said public acts of the state of Alabama in the state of Georgia, contrary to the provisions of art. 4, 1 of the Constitution of the United States.' A demurrer to the plea in abatement was sustained and the judgment for the plaintiff thereafter entered was affirmed by the court of appeals. The case was then brought to this court.
There are many cases where right and remedy are so united that the right cannot be enforced except in the manner and before the tribunal designated by the act. For the rule is well settled that 'where the provision for the liability is coupled with a provision for the special remedy, that remedy, that alone, must be employed.' Pollard v. Bailey, 20 Wall. 527, 22 L. ed. 378; Galveston, H. & S. A. R. Co. v. Wallace, 223 U.S. 490 , 56 L. ed. 522, 32 Sup. Ct. Rep. 205; Stewart v. Baltimore & O. R. Co. 168 U.S. 445 , 42 L. ed. 537, 18 Sup. Ct. Rep. 105; Fourth Nat. Bank v. Francklyn, 120 U.S. 753 , 30 L. ed. 828, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 757.
But that rule has no application to a case arising under the Alabama Code relating to suits for injuries caused by defective machinery. For, whether the statute be treated as prohibiting certain defenses, as removing common-law restrictions, or as imposing upon the master a new and larger liability, it is in either event evident that the place of bringing the suit is not part of the cause of action,-the right and the remedy are not so inseparably united as to make the right dependent upon its being enforced in a particular tribunal. The cause of action is transitory, and like any other transitory action can be enforced 'in any court of competent jurisdiction within the state of Alabama . . .' But the owner of the defective machinery causing the injury may have removed from the state, and it would be a deprivation of a fixed right if the plaintiff could not sue the defendant in Alabama because he had left the state, nor sue him where the defendant or his property could be found because the statute did not permit a suit elsewhere than in Alabama. The injured plaintiff may likewise have moved from Alabama, and for that, or other, reason may have found it to his interest to [233 U.S. 354, 360] bring suit by attachment or in personam in a state other than where the injury was inflicted.
The case here is controlled by the decision of this court in Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. v. Sowers, 213 U.S. 55, 70 , 53 S. L. ed. 695, 702, 29 Sup. Ct. Rep. 397, where the New Mexico statute, giving a right of action for personal injuries, and providing that suits should be brought after certain form of notice in a particular district, was preceded by the recital that 'it has become customary for persons claiming damages for personal injuries received in this territory to institute and maintain suits for the recovery thereof in other states and territories, to the increased cost and annoyance and manifest injury and oppression of the business interests of this territory and the derogation of the dignity of the courts thereof.' Despite this statement of the public policy of the territory, the judgment obtained by the plaintiff in Texas was affirmed by this court in an opinion wherein it was said that where an action is brought in 'another jurisdiction, based upon common-law principles, although having certain statutory restrictions, such as are found in this [ territorial] act, as to the making of an affidavit, and limiting the time of prosecuting the suit, full faith and credit is given to the law when the recovery is permitted, subject to the restrictions upon the right of action imposed in the territory enacting [233 U.S. 354, 361] the statute. . . . When it is shown that the court in the other jurisdiction observed such conditions, and that a recovery was permitted after such conditions had been complied with, the jurisdiction thus invoked is not defeated because of the provision of the statute' requiring the suit to be brought in the district where the plaintiff resides or where the defendant, if a corporation, has its principal place of business.

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