Court Opinion

ID: 9419406
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:20.661754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.929116
License: Public Domain

MR. Justice Douglas,
dissenting:
While I have joined in the opinion of Mr. Justice Black, certain observations in the concurring opinion lead me to add a few words.
I do not agree with the view that the full faith and credit clause is to be enforced “only if the outcome pleases us.” We are dealing here with highly controversial subjects where honest differences of opinion are almost certain to occur. Each case involves a clash between the policies of two sovereign States. The question is not which policy we prefer; it is whether the two conflicting policies can somehow be accommodated. The command of the full faith and credit clause frequently makes a reconciliation of the two interests impossible. One must give way in the larger interest of the federal union. The question in each case is whether as a practical matter there is room for adjustment, consistent with the requirements of full faith and credit. Williams v. North Carolina, 317 U. S. 287, is a recent example. One domiciled in Nevada was granted a divorce from his North Carolina spouse on notice by publication. The question for us was whether that decree was a defense to a prosecution for bigamy in North Carolina. Such questions of status, i. e., marital capacity, involve conflicts between the policies of two States which are quite irreconcilable as compared with the present situation.
If the claim under the Texas Act had been denied because of statutory defenses accorded the employer, I do not *448suppose that the requirements of full faith and credit would bar the subsequent claim under a Louisiana statute which did not recognize such defenses. At least Troxell v. Delaware, L. & W. R. Co., 227 U. S. 434, which has never been overruled, points to that result for it held that a denial of recovery under a state act was no barrier to a suit under a federal act for the same injury. If the full faith and credit clause would not prevent a recovery under the Louisiana Act where an award under the Texas Act had been denied, I do not see how Louisiana can be prevented from granting a recover after Texas has made an award. The action of Texas would be as definite and final an adjudication of the rights and duties of the parties under the Texas statute in the one case as in the other. Moreover, the two statutes are not mutually exclusive as was true in Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Schendel, 270 U. S. 611. Thus a determination that an employer is under the Texas Act does not mean conversely that he is excluded from the coverage of Louisiana’s law.
The principle of the Troxell case seems apposite here since the claim in Texas was only one for “compensation under the Employers Liability Act” of that State. And the Texas award purported to do no more than to adjudicate rights and duties under the Texas Act. For it provided that when fully paid it would discharge the insurer “from all liability by reason of this claim for compensation.” If the Texas award had undertaken to adjudicate the rights and duties of the parties under the Louisiana contract of employment, which we are told carries the right to compensation under the Louisiana Act (10 So. 2d 109, 112), the result would be quite different. Then the judgment, like the divorce decree in the Williams case, would undertake to regulate the relationship of the parties, or their rights and duties which flow from it, as respects their undertakings in another State. And since Texas would have had jurisdiction over the parties its *449decree would be a bar to the present action in Louisiana. But there is nothing in the Texas proceeding or in the Texas award to indicate that that was either intended or done. The most charitable construction is that Texas undertook to adjust the rights and duties of the parties and to regulate their relationship only so long as they remained subject to the jurisdiction of Texas.
Under the circumstances disclosed the situation is thus quite different from the usual transitory action or from a decree which undertakes to sever marital bonds between one domiciled in a state and a non-resident. But even if the Texas award were less clear than I think it is, I would resolve all doubts against an inference that rights under the Louisiana contract were adjudicated in Texas. Such a course seems to me essential so that the greatest possible accommodations of the interests of the two States, consistent with the requirements of full faith and credit, may be had whether the matter be divorce, workmen’s compensation or any other subject on which state policies differ.
On its face Yarborough v. Yarborough, 290 U. S. 202, might seem to look the other way. There a Georgia decree of permanent alimony for a child was held to be entitled to full faith and credit in South Carolina where the child subsequently sought additional allowances. But the Georgia decree was more clearly an adjudication of the aggregate liability of the defendant than was the Texas award in the present case, for it relieved the father on compliance with its provisions of “all payments of alimony.” 290 U. S. p. 207. Moreover, the father was not a resident of South Carolina but had long been domiciled in Georgia. The Court specifically reserved the question whether the Georgia decree would be entitled to full faith and credit as a final discharge of the duty to support had the father been domiciled in South Carolina. 290 U. S. *450p. 213. Here the Texas award is not only a limited one. The employee is domiciled in Louisiana, the employer is authorized to do business in Louisiana. The employment contract is a Louisiana contract. Louisiana has such a considerable interest at stake that I would allow its policy to be obliterated or subordinated only in case what took place in Texas is irreconcilable with what Louisiana now seeks to do. I do not think it is.
It is thus apparent that the decision of Williams v. North Carolina is no shelter in the present controversy.
Mr. Justice Murphy joins in this dissent.