Court Opinion

ID: 9419407
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:20.665856+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.933204
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
dissenting:
The respondent Hunt is a resident of Louisiana, employed in that state by the petitioner and sent by the petitioner to do work in Texas. While in Texas he was seriously injured in the course of his employment. Confined to a hospital he was told that he could not recover compensation unless he signed two forms presented to him. As found by the Louisiana trial judge there was printed on each of the forms “in small type” the designation “Industrial Accident Board, Austin, Texas.” To get his compensation Hunt signed the forms and the Texas insurer began to pay. Returning to his home in Louisiana Hunt apparently discovered that his interests would be more fully protected under Louisiana law and notified the insurer of an intention to claim under the statute of that state. The insurer immediately stopped payment to him and notified the Texas Board to that effect. Four days later, without any request from Hunt, the Board notified him at his Louisiana home that a hearing would be held in Texas within two and a half weeks “to determine the liability of the insurance company” under Texas law. Hunt did not participate in that proceeding. The Texas Board thereafter made an award to him which, under the *451law of Texas, was equivalent to a judgment against the insurer. Before the Texas award became final Hunt, who had declined to accept any money under it, filed suit against his employer in the courts of Louisiana under the Workmen’s Compensation Law of Louisiana. He recovered a judgment for a substantially larger sum than had been allowed him under the Texas award, from which the Louisiana court deducted the sum he had already received from the Texas insurer.
The employer has contended here that the Texas award against the insurer was a judgment which under the full faith and credit clause precluded the employee from any further relief in the courts of Louisiana. The Court today agrees with the employer, holding that while in “exceptional cases . . . the judgment of one state may not override the laws and policy of another, this Court is the final arbiter of the extent of the exceptions.” The Court declines to recognize an exception in the case now before us, buttressing its conclusion with a contention that the case of Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Schendel, 270 U. S. 611, requires such a result.
I disagree. As I see it, this case properly involves two separate legal questions: (1) Did Texas intend the award of its Industrial Accident Board against the insurer to bar the right granted the employee by the Louisiana Workmen’s Compensation Law to collect from his employer for the same injury the difference between the compensation allowed by Texas and the more generous compensation allowed by Louisiana? (2) Assuming the Texas award was intended to constitute such a bar, does the interest of Louisiana in regulating the employment contracts of its residents nevertheless permit it to grant that larger measure of compensation which as a matter of local policy it believes necessary? The decision of the Court on both of these issues appears to me to be wrong.
*452I.
Where a state court refuses to recognize the judgment of a sister state as a bar to an asserted cause of action, the full faith and credit clause cannot raise a federal question unless the judgment would have been a bar to a similar suit in that sister state. R. S. § 905, U. S. C. Title 28, § 687; Titus v. Wallick, 306 U. S. 282. Even where the judgment would bar the suit in the sister state, “as this Court has often recognized, there are many judgments which need not be given the same force and effect abroad which they have at home, and there are some, though valid in the state where rendered, to which the full faith and credit clause gives no force elsewhere.” Dissenting opinion, Yarborough v. Yarborough, 290 U. S. 202, 213, 214, 215. Whether Texas intended that its award should bar the employee here from recovering compensation under the Louisiana law is an issue upon which Texas courts have not spoken. In fact, they absolutely refuse to entertain any suits at all based on the Louisiana Workmen's Compensation Law. Johnson v. Employers Liability Corp., 99 S. W. 2d 979.
The general rule of res judicata announced by Texas courts is that a judgment on the merits constitutes “a finality as to the claim or demand in controversy, concluding parties and those in privity with them ... as to every matter which was offered and received to sustain or defeat the claim or demand, [and] as to any other admissible matter which might have been offered for that purpose.” Rio Bravo Oil Co. v. Hebert, 130 Tex. 1, 8, 9, 106 S. W. 2d 242, 246. The opinion of Section A of the Texas Commission of Appeals in Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Pruitt, 58 S. W. 2d 41, 44 — 45, relied upon by the Court, presents an application of this rule to Texas workmen’s compensation awards. There it was held that an employee who had been denied a compensation award by *453the Accident Board could not bring a second proceeding before the Board against the same insurer to recover compensation for the same injuries. In the instant case the situation is entirely different. The parties are not the same; the issues are not the same; and the two proceedings are not under the same Act. The proceeding in this case before the Texas Board was against the insurer only and the award entered, by its express terms, was limited to a release of the insurance company from further liability. The liability of the employer under Louisiana law was not in issue before the Board and could not have been put in issue. The employer was not a party to that proceeding; nor was there “privity” between the insurer and the employer since the insurer’s liability did not extend to rights which the employee might have against his employer under Louisiana law. Moreover the jurisdiction of the Accident Board is limited to administration of the Texas Workmen’s Compensation Act; even if the issues of liability under Louisiana law had been raised they could not have been decided by that Board. The decision of this Court today, therefore, is tantamount to holding that Texas intended to extinguish a claim against the employer in a proceeding in which the employer was not a party and the issue of its liability under Louisiana law was not allowed to be raised. I cannot impute such an intention to Texas.
The statutes of Texas lend support to the view that the Accident Board’s award was not intended to bar the employee’s rights against his employer arising under the law of Louisiana. Under the Texas statutes an award of the Accident Board neither adds to nor subtracts from an employer’s liability to an injured employee. That liability is fixed, not by an award, but by a tripartite contract implied by the Texas statute between the employer, the employee, and the insurer, under which the employee *454agrees not to sue the employer for occupational injuries under the common law or statutes of Texas.1 An employee who fails to elect to retain his common law remedies against his employer is deemed to have waived only his “right of action at common law or under any statute of this state.”2 (Italics supplied.) Clearly this Texas statute did not intend that a workman who elected to come under the compensation act should thereby lose any rights created by the laws of other states. That section of the Texas statutes relied upon by the Court requires no different result. It provides that an employee injured “outside of the State” cannot recover under the Texas act if “he has elected to pursue his remedy and recovers in the state where such injury occurred.” 3 Plainly this latter statute pertains only to the right of recovery under Texas law; it does not purport to affect rights under the laws of other states. Nor does it proceed on any theory of res judicata for if an employee fails to recover in the other state he can nevertheless recover an award in Texas. And in any event the statute could not apply to the instant case, for this employee’s injury did not occur “outside” of Texas. The dictum of the Travelers Insurance Co. v. Cason, 132 Tex. 393, 396, 124 S. W. 2d 321, referred *455to by the Court, pertains to the rights of a Texas workman who was injured in Pennsylvania.
In the absence of compelling language this Court should not construe the statutes of Texas in such a manner that grave questions of their constitutionality are raised. Cf. Yarborough v. Yarborough, supra, 213, 214. It is extremely doubtful whether Texas has the power, by any legal device, to preclude a sister state from granting to its own residents employed within its own borders that measure of compensation for occupational injuries which it deems advisable. "A state can legislate only with reference to its own jurisdiction; and the full faith and credit clause does not require the enforcement of every right which has ripened into a judgment of another state or has been conferred by its statutes." Broderick v. Rosner, 294 U. S. 629, 642. The practical result of the decision here is to hold that Texas has power to nullify a Louisiana statute which gives the beneficial protection of workmen's compensation to an injured workman who is a resident of Louisiana and made his contract of employment there. I "am not persuaded that the full faith and credit clause gives sanction to such control by one state of the internal affairs of another." Yarborough v. Yarborough, supra, 214.
II.
It is apparently conceded that Louisiana would not have been required to apply the Texas statute had there not been a judgment in the partieular case by the Texas tribunal. This freedom of the state to apply its own policy in workmen's compensation cases despite a conflicting statute in the state in which the accident occurs rests on the theory that the state where the workman is hired or is domiciled has a genuine and special interest in the outcome of the litigation. Alaska Packers Assn. v. Industrial Accident Comm'n, 294 U. S. 532, 541-543, 549; cf. Pacific *456Employers Ins. Co. v. Industrial Accident Comm’n, 306 U. S. 493, 503. These cases mark recognition of the fact that the authority of the states to act in any field is to be measured as much by vital state interests as by technical legal concepts. Cf. Hoopeston Canning Co. v. Cullen, 318 U. S. 313. The argument of state interest is hardly less compelling when Louisiana chooses to reject as decisive of the issues of the case a foreign judgment than when it rejects a foreign statute.
The interest of Texas in providing compensation for an injured employee who like respondent was only temporarily employed in the state is not the same as that of Louisiana where the respondent was domiciled and where the contract of employment was made. Someone has to take care of an individual who has received, as has respondent, an injury which permanently disables him from performance of his work. If employers or the consumers of their goods do not shoulder this responsibility, the general public of a state must. Neither state merely vindicates a private wrong growing out of tortious conduct. McKane v. New Amsterdam Casualty Co., 199 So. 175, 179 (Ct. of App. of La., Orleans); Texas Employers’ Ins. Assn. v. Price, 291 S. W. 287, 290. The Louisiana Act was passed in the interest of the general welfare of the people of Louisiana. Puchner v. Employers’ Liability Corp., 198 La. 922, 5 So. 2d 288.4 If it chooses to be more generous to injured workmen than Texas, no Constitutional issue is presented.
*457The decision of the Court is not required by the Schendel case. In that case an employee brought an action in a Minnesota court under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. His employer brought an action in Iowa under the state law, the result of which was a holding by the Iowa court that the action had occurred in intrastate commerce. This Court held in the Schendel case, which was a review of the Minnesota proceedings, that the decision of the Iowa court that the accident occurred in intrastate commerce was res judicata and that the employee could not attempt to show that the accident had in fact occurred in interstate commerce as would have been necessary to bring the case within the coverage of the federal Act. The case is wholly distinguishable since the policy of the Federal Employers’ Liability Act has not been thought to require that a federal award supplement a state workmen’s compensation award. The statutes involved were not conflicting but were mutually exclusive, the federal Act covering only injuries in interstate commerce, U. S. C. Title 45, § 51 et seq.
Today’s decision is flatly in conflict with accepted law and practice. The Restatement of Conflict of Laws, § 403 states categorically that an “award already had under the Workmen’s Compensation Act of another state will not bar a proceeding under an applicable Act, but the amount paid on a prior award in another state will be credited on the second award,” and one of the foremost studies of workmen’s compensation states the same rule.5 Even in the absence of an express statute several state courts have explicitly approved this practice. Gilbert v. Des Lauriers Column Mould Co., 180 App. Div. 59, 167 N. Y. S. 274; Interstate Power Co. v. Industrial Commission, 203 Wis. 466, 234 N. W. 889; see similarly McLaughlin’s Case, 274 Mass. 217, 174 N. E. 338; Migues’s Case, *458281 Mass. 373, 183 N. E. 847. Texas itself for a time applied a similar ruling. Texas Employers’ Ins. Assn. v. Price, 300 S. W. 667.
North Carolina provides by statute in cases like the present that the employee should be entitled to receive compensation provided that if he receives compensation from a state other than North Carolina, he will be given no more compensation by North Carolina than would raise the total recovery to the maximum allowed by the North Carolina law.6 Six other states have similar statutes.7 The Committee on Workmen’s Compensation Legislation of the International Association of Industrial Accident Boards and Commissions has drafted a uniform state law on the subject which, were it applicable in the instant case, would permit the employee to waive his rights under the Louisiana law by bringing an action under the Texas law only by filing a written waiver with a Louisiana Commission which would not be binding until approved by such a Commission.8 This proposed uniform state law would presumably be unconstitutional under the decision announced today since it would leave in Louisiana the power to decide whether the employee should receive ad*459ditional compensation despite the effect which Texas might seek to give to its award.
Whether the theory is that Texas did not intend its judgment to bar a proceeding in Louisiana or that the Texas workmen’s compensation law is so incompatible with the policy of Louisiana that Louisiana is not bound by the Texas judgment, the result should be the same: There should be no Constitutional barrier preventing a state in effect from increasing the workmen’s compensation award of another state in a case in which it has jurisdiction over the participants and the social responsibility for the results. Where two states both have a legitimate interest in the outcome of workmen’s compensation litigation, the question of whether the second state which considers the case should abide by the decision of the first is a question of policy which should be decided by the state legislatures and courts.9 Certainly fair argument can be made for either disposition of the policy question. Texas itself decided the question one way by decision in the Pnce case, 300 S. W. 667, supra, and, to a limited extent, the other way by statute.10 State laws vary, and uniformity is not the highest value in the law of workmen’s compensation, a point well made by the Supreme Court of Wisconsin when confronted with this very prob*460lem in Interstate Power Co. v. Industrial Commission, supra, 477:
“This state adopted a very liberal act, and it is reasonably to be inferred that the legislature was more concerned with making certain that workmen within its jurisdiction should get all the benefits of the act than it was with any conflicts or legal difficulties which might arise out of lack of uniformity. Our plain duty is to give to the act its intended effect, and to leave to the legislature the enactment of provisions designed to limit its operation in the interest of uniformity.”
Much has been made in the argument here of the alleged vice of double recovery which is said to be allowed the respondent. Let me emphasize that there is no double recovery. In the first place the Louisiana court has deducted from its judgment the amount of the Texas payments. In the second place the aggregate of the awards from both states, if added together, would be far less than the total loss suffered by respondent. The Texas allowance scarcely amounts to a “recovery” in the sense of giving full compensation for loss, and has been described by a Texas court to be “more in the nature of a pension than a liability for breach of contract, or damages intact.” Texas Employers’ Ins. Assn. v. Price, 300 S. W. 667, supra, 669. See also Biddinger v. Steininger-Taylor Co., 25 Ohio Dec. 603, 608.
The Court seems in some parts of its opinion to adopt a wholly new and far reaching policy relating to the power of states to allow complete indemnification for a personal injury by permitting more than one suit against the wrongdoer, and to engraft this policy on to the full faith and credit clause. Courts schooled in the common law have long objected to what has been designated “splitting a cause of action.” They have phrased this policy objection in many common law concepts, one of which has been *461the doctrine of “election of remedies.” This predilection of common law judges in favor of compelling the aggregation of all possible elements of damage into one law suit is here apparently elevated to a position of Constitutional impregnability in the full faith and credit clause. The Court now seems to interpret that clause to prohibit a recovery of full compensation for a personal injury in more than one suit even if one or more states think full compensation can best be accorded in this manner. The practical result of this drastic new Constitutional doctrine is that State B must give more faith and credit to State A’s judgment for damages for personal injury than State A itself intended the judgment should be given. State A’s and State B’s judgments are said to be mutually exclusive, not because either state made them so, but apparently on the ground that the full faith and credit clause imposes a rule of substantive law which requires this result. This doctrine would accord to the full faith and credit clause a meaning which it would have had if its authors had stated, “Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the . . . judicial Proceedings of every other State, and in addition two recoveries shall never be allowed by separate states for losses resulting from a single personal injury.” When the authors of the Constitution desired to prohibit two criminal prosecutions for the same offense, they had no difficulty in expressing their views.11 Had they wished to hobble the states in their efforts to provide more than one remedy in order to accomplish full justice in civil cases, I think they could and would have expressed themselves with equal clarity and emphasis.
*462III.
The effect of the decision of this Court today is to strike down as unconstitutional an important provision of the workmen’s compensation laws of at least eleven states. For more than half a century the power of the states to regulate their domestic economic affairs has been narrowly restricted by judicial interpretation of the federal Constitution. The chief weapon in the arsenal of restriction, only recently falling into disrepute because of overuse, is the due process clause. The full faith and credit clause, used today to serve the same purposes, is no better suited to control the freedom of the states. The practical question now before us can be decided by the states in many ways and most of the states which have expressed themselves seem ready to dispose of the problem as has Louisiana. Our notions of policy should not permit the Constitution to become a barrier to free experimentation by the states with the problems of workmen’s compensation.
Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. Justice Rutledge concur in this opinion.

 Texas Rev. Civ. Stat., Title 130, Art. 8306, § 3 (a). I do not agree with the Court that § 3 of this Article purports to compel an employee to waive rights which arise under the laws of another state. Such a construction would reduce the above quoted language of § 3 (a) to deceptive verbiage.

 Rev. Civ. Stat., Article 8306, § 19. Apparently only one other state, Oregon, has a statute comparable to this. See Oregon Code (1935, Supplement) § 49-1813a.

 The classic theory of the interest of a state in workmen’s compensation was expressed by this Court in upholding the constitutionality of a state compensation system: In the absence of a workmen’s compensation system, "the injured workman is left to bear the greater part of industrial accident loss, which because of his limited income he is unable to sustain, so that he and those dependent upon him are overcome by poverty and frequently become a burden upon public or private charity.” New York Central R. Co. v. White, 243 U. S. 188, 197.

 Dodd, Administration of Workmen’s Compensation (1936) pp. 819, 820. See also to the same effect 2 Beale, The Conflict of Laws (1935) §403.1.

 N. C. Code (1939) §8081 (rr).

 Florida: Florida Statutes (1941) §440.09 (1); Georgia: Georgia Code (1933) § 114-411; Maryland: Maryland Annotated Code (1939), Flack’s Edition, Art. 101, §80 (3); Ohio: Page’s Ohio General Code, § 1465-68; South Carolina: S. C. Code (1942) § 7035-39; and Virginia: Virginia Code (1942) §1887 (37). No less than thirty-four states have enacted statutes which expressly permit recovery of workmen’s compensation under specified circumstances for injuries received in another state. And the courts of nine additional states have construed statutes which are not express to achieve the same result. See Schneider, Workmen’s Compensation Law (1941) Vol. 1, c. 5, pp. 441-568; Schneider, Workmen’s Compensation Statutes (1939), Vols. 1 — 4.

 U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Bulletin No. 577 (1933) pp. 15-16.

 “The interest, which New Hampshire has, in exercising that control, derived from the presence of employer and employe within its borders, and the commission of the tortious act there, is at least as valid as that of Vermont, derived from the fact that the status is that of its citizens, and originated when they were in Vermont, before going to New Hampshire. I can find nothing in the history of the full faith and credit clause, or the decisions under it, which lends support to the view that it compels any state to subordinate its domestic policy, with respect to persons and their acts within its borders, to the laws of any other.” Concurring opinion in Bradford, Electric Light Co. v. Clapper, 286 U. S. 145, 163, 164.

 Rev. Civ. Stat., Article 8306, § 19.

 United States Constitution, Fifth Amendment. It has been held that, consistent with the Fifth Amendment, the federal government can impose criminal liability upon an individual for the same conduct for which he has been tried and convicted under a state criminal statute. United States v. Lanza, 260 U. S. 377.