Court Opinion

ID: 9841888
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:10:03.095176+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:05:58.695358
License: Public Domain

.Mr. Chief Justice Fuller,
with' whom concurred
Mr.' Justice Harlan and Mr. Justice Peckhám, dissenting.'
Slater, the deceased, was a citizen of Texas, residing at Laredo in that State. The Mexican National. Railroad Company was a corporation of Colorado, owning and operating a railroad from Laredo to the. City of Mexico. Its superintendent resided in Laredo. Slater was fatally injured through the negligence of the company while working in its yard in New Laredo, .just across the Rio Grande in Mexico, and died in. Laredo from the injuries so inflicted. Bis wife and- children, ■ who resided in Laredo., brought this suit hi the. Circuit Court of the United States, diverse citizenship toeing -the ground of-jurisdiction, and no objection in. that regard arises. Defendant did not "happen to be.caught” in Laredo, but was domi- • ciled there. '
The laws of Texas provided. that an action for damages on account of injuries, causing death may be brought when the death is caused by the wrongful .act, negligence, unskillfulness;, or default of another, and without regard to any criminal proceedings in relation to the homicide. The jury are to give such. damages as they may think proportioned to the injury resulting from the death, to be divided among the persons entitled in such shares as found by the verdict. The jury pursued that course in this case,under the instructions' of the Circuit Court.
By the laws- of Mexico, damages are recoverable for death by wrongful-act,,but .they, it is said,.are awarded as support by decree, in the nature of alimony or pension.
*132As the two countries concur in holding that the act complained of is the subject of legal redress, the question is whether recovery in this cause must be defeated because the law of • Mexico controls and cannot be enforced in Texas.
It seems to me that the method of arriving at and distributing the damages pertains to procedure or remédy, that is to say, to the course of the court after parties are brought in, and the means of redressing the wrong, and I think the general rule that procedure and remedy are regulated by the law of the forum is applicable. 2 Rawle’s Bouvier, 870; Kring v. Missouri, 107 U. S. 221; Stewart v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, 168 U. S. 445.
In Northern Pacific Railroad Company v. Babcock, 154 U. S. 190, 199, the company was not a corporation of Minnesota, and . the riding simply was that the right to recover’was governed by the lex loci. The amount found was within, the law of Minnesota as well as that' of Montana.
The extent of damages does not enter into any definition of the right enforced or the cause of action permitted to be prosecuted. Finch, J., Wooden v. Railroad Company, 126 N. Y. 10.
In Scott v. Lord Seymour, 1 H. & C. 219, which was an action .by one British, subject against another for an assault committed in .a foreign country, it was held unanimously by the Courts of Exchequer and of the Exchequer Chamber that the objection that by the foreign law compensation in damages could not be recovered until certain penal proceedings -had. been commenced and determined there,: wás an objection to procedure'merely, ..and not a bar to the action in England.
And many of the judges were of opinion that an- action was maintainable for any act which would have been a tort if done in England, and, whether actionable or not, was unjustifiable: or wrongful, in a broad sense, under the law of the foreign country where the act was done.
. Mr. Justice Wightman, (Willes, J., in effect concurring;} specifically held that if an action would lie by the" English law for a particular wrong, the English courts would give redress *133for it, though it was committed in a country by the laws of which no redress would be granted, if the parties were boto British subjects.
This case has never been overruled, and is cited as authority by Mr. Pollock in his work on-Torts (6th ed.), p. 201.
At all events, the rule in England is well settled, as thus laid down in Machado v. Fontes, (1897) L. R. 2 Q. B. 231: “An action will lie in this country in respect of an act committed outside the jurisdiction if the act is wrongful both in this country and in the country where it was committed; bu; it is not necessary that the act should be the subject of civL. proceedings in the foreign country.” Phillips v. Eyre, (1870) L. R. 6 Q. B. 1, and The M. Moxham, (1876) 1 P. D. 107, were there cited and applied.
In Phillips v. Eyre, Willes, J., delivering the opinion of the Exchequer Chamber, said: “As a general rule, m order to found a suit in England, for a wrong alleged to have been committed abroad, two conditions must be fulfilled. First, the wrong must be of such a character that it would have been actionable if committed in England. .. . , Secondly, the act must not have been justifiable by the law of the, place where it was done:”
In The Halley, L. R. 2 P. C. 193; 203, Lord Justice Selwyn, speaking for the court, said: “It is true that in many cases the courts of England inquire into and act upon the law of foreign countries, as in the case of a contract entered into in a foreign country, where, by express reference, or by necessary implication, .the foreign law is incorporated with the contract, and proof and consideration of the foreign law therefore become necessary to the construction of the contract itself. And as in the ease of a collision on an ordinary road in a foreign country, where the rule of the road in force at the place of collision may be a necessary ingredient in the determination of the question by whose fault or negligence the alleged tort was committed. But in these and similar cases the English court admits the proof of the foreign law as part of the circumstances *134attending the execution of the contract, or as one of the facts upon which the existence of the tort, or the right to- damages, may depend, and it then applies and enforces its own law so •far as it is applicable to the case thus established; but it is, in their Lordship's opinion; alike contrary to principle and to authority, to hold, that an English court of justice will enforce ' a foreign municipal law, and will give a remedy in the shape of damages in respect of an act which, according to its own principles, imposes no liability on the person from whom the damages are claimed.”
The rule in this court goes further, for "by our law, a private action may be maintained in one State, if not contrary to its own policy, for such a wrong done in another and actionable there, although a like wrong would not be actionable in the State where the suit is brought.” Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U. S. 657, 670.
It is enough that the act complained of here was wrongful by both the law of Texas and the law of Mexico, and in such a case the action lies in Texas, except where the cause of action is not transitory, but is purely local such as trespass to land. Dennick v. Railroad Company, 103 U. S. 11; Railway Co. v. Cox, 145 U. S. 593; Ellenwood v. Marietta Chair Company, 158 U. S. 105; Mitchell v. Harmony, 13 How. 115; McKenna v. Fisk, 1 How. 241.
It is suggested that the Texas courts have held that there can be no recovery in Texas because of the dissimilarity in the ascertainment of damages between the law of Texas and that of Mexico. -Abd this seems to have been so ruled in Mexican National Railway v. Jackson, 89 Texas, 107, but the question is one of general law, and we are not bound by that ruling. Moreover, the railway company is stated in that case to have been "a Mexican corporation whose line of railway extended into Texas,” whereas in this case the company is a corporation qf Colorado, domiciled in Texas, and whose line of railway extends from Texas into Mexico. Again, after that decision was rendered, in Mexican Central Railway Company v. Mitten, *13513 Tex. Civ. App. 653, the company being a Massachusetts corporation and Mitten a citizen of Texas, the Court of Civil Appeals for the Fourth District of Texas held to the contrary.
The court said: “ If the construction placed upon the decision in the Jackson case be the true one, and some of its expressions would seem to justify the construction, it is a practical denial of remedies for wrongs that may be inflicted by one of our. citizens upon another in Mexico, . . . ” and: “We are not willing to subscribe to such doctrine and will not extend the scope of the decision referred to beyond the purview of the facts of that case.”
The Supreme Court of Texas apparently accepted this view for it refused to grant a writ of error to review the judgment. 13 Tex. Civ. App. v. And see Evey v. Mexican Central Railway Company, 81 Fed. Rep. 294.
I entirely agree with the views expressed in Scott v. Seymour, to which I have referred. The legal relations of Slater with the United States and Texas were not destroyed by his crossing the Rio Grande to work in the railroad yard. This Colorado corporation was domiciled in Texas, as Slater was. The laws of Texas protected them alike. The injury was inflicted in Mexico and resulted fatally in Texas. The wrongful act was actionable in Texas and in Mexico.
The jurisdiction of the Circuit Court over person and subject matter was unquestionable, and I cannot accept the conclusion that- the form in which the law of Mexico provides for reparation to its own citizens constitutes a bar to recovery in Texas in litigation between citizens of this country.
My brothers Harlan and Peckham concur in this dissent.