Court Opinion

ID: 9420025
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:52:36.027956+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:21.805543
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas, Mr. Justice Murphy, and Mr. Justice Rutledge join,
dissenting.
The Order of United Commercial Travelers is a corporation chartered under the laws, of Ohio with power to do a fraternal insurance business. It sells contracts of insurance in Ohio. South Dakota has licensed the corporation to sell fraternal insurance policies in that state. Under this permission, the corporation has an office, called a local council, in Black Hills, South Dakota, vested with *626power to administer “the business and fraternal affairs of the Order.”
The insured, a citizen and resident of South Dakota, applied to the Black Hills office for membership and an insurance policy. After the application had been accepted and an insurance certificate signed at the petitioner’s home office in Ohio, it was “forwarded by the said Defendant corporation to South Dakota for delivery to the insured.” From then until his death in South Dakota, the insured paid his premiums to the corporation’s Black Hills office. During all that period his beneficiary lived in that state. This action was brought in a court of that state on behalf of the beneficiary after the corporation had refused to pay the claim.
The association denied liability because this suit had not been commenced within six months after the association had disallowed the beneficiary’s claim. This is required by the corporation’s constitution which is incorporated by reference into its contracts of insurance. And in a series of cases, cited in the Court’s opinion, the Supreme Court of Ohio has held that suits brought in Ohio courts on mutual, stock company, or fraternal insurance contracts, may be barred by contractual arrangements between the parties which require that suit be brought within a shorter period than that provided by the Ohio limitations statutes.
But the South Dakota Supreme Court has held that a statute of that state which provides that “every provision in a contract restricting a party from enforcing his rights under it by usual legal proceedings in ordinary tribunals or limiting his time to do so, is void,” S. D. Code § 10.0705 (1939), renders the limitation provision in this contract unenforceable in her courts. This Court today reverses the South Dakota decision on the ground that its refusal to enforce the private contract is a denial of full faith and credit to the “public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings” of Ohio. U. S. Const., Art. IV, § 1.
*627First. More than one hundred years ago this Court said that to require a state to apply the “limitation laws” of another state rather than its own would reduce it “to a state of vassalage,” presenting the anomaly “of a sovereign state governed by the laws of another sovereign.” Hawkins v. Barney’s Lessee, 5 Pet. 457, 466-467. A few years later the Court was asked to hold that the full faith and credit clause barred a state from applying its own statute of limitations in a suit brought on a cause of action which had arisen in another state. On that question the Court did not “entertain a doubt”; the holding was that it could not “be even plausibly inferred” that the state in which the suit was brought was denied that power by the full faith and credit clause. M’Elmoyle v. Cohen, 13 Pet. 312, 324, 328. While the case then under consideration involved a suit on a judgment rendered in another state, the broad ruling was that, so far as the full faith and credit clause is concerned, a state has power to apply its own statute of limitations in every kind of action and without regard to where the cause of action arose.
The constitutional force of the M’Elmoyle refusal to require a forum state to give full faith and credit to a foreign state’s statute of limitations is not weakened in the slightest by the fact that some states have seen fit to adopt “borrowing statutes.” See Cope v. Anderson, ante, p. 461, at note 3. For other states, notably South Dakota here, have adopted statutes with purposes quite opposite to that of borrowing statutes. And under the M’Elmoyle rule, whichever limitations policy a forum state chooses to follow — to borrow or to refuse to borrow— it is free, so far as the full faith and credit clause is concerned, to do so.
The plain effect of today’s decision is to overrule the M’Elmoyle case. And it does so, despite the fact that the holding of that case has never before been cited with disapproval; in fact, that holding has been repeatedly *628approved and reaffirmed throughout the years since it was decided.1 The Court distinguishes the M’Elmoyle rule, and in fact relies generally for its decision upon the line of decisions in which Modern Woodmen of America v. Mixer, 267 U. S. 544, is the leading case. But the statute of limitations was not in issue in the Mixer case, the case on which it relied, or the cases which have since relied on it. The M’Elmoyle case was not even cited in the Court’s Mixer opinion; nor does anything said in it'detract from the rule of the M’Elmoyle case that states can, despite the full faith and credit clause, apply their own statutes of limitation.2 Yet the Court now treats the Mixer case as controlling, and holds that the full faith and credit *629clause deprives South Dakota of power to apply its own statute of limitations.3
But more than that, the “state of vassalage” to which the Court’s decision here reduces South Dakota is not even in subordination to the laws'of another state. The Court’s opinion means that South Dak.ota must yield to a “law” adopted by the members of an Ohio-created private fraternal insurance association. 'That “law,” appearing only in the private association’s constitution, provides in the same kind of language that legislatures ordinarily use in their statutes of limitation that “No suit or proceeding, either at law or in equity, shall be brought to recover any benefits under this Article after .six (6) months from the date of the claim for said benefits is disallowed by the Supreme Executive Committee.”
The nearest that this private association’s “law” comes to being a law of Ohio is that Ohio permits but does not require it. Because the private association’s constitution was incorporated by reference in the policy contract, including the constitution’s “statute of limitations,” the Court now holds that this corporate “statute of limitations” prohibits application of South Dakota’s statute of limitations. Thus the Court’s ’ holding is that an Ohio *630private corporation’s laws have a higher constitutional standing than an Ohio law or judgment would have — unless, as seems to be true, M’Elmoyle v. Cohen, supra, and subsequent cases approving it are now being overruled. It would be quite a radical departure from this Court’s previous authorities to hold that the full faith and credit clause bars a government from applying its own statutes of limitations to suits brought in its courts, a power which, this Court said in its M’Elmoyle decision, governments have exercised since remote antiquity. Id. at 327. It is a far greater departure to hold that a state’s limitation statute must take second place to the limitations rules adopted by a privately operated corporation.
It should come as quite a surprise to Ohio that its state policy can supplant South Dakota’s statute of limitations, since Ohio’s highest Court follows the M’Elmoyle rule that “Statutes of limitation relate to the remedy, and are, and must be, governed by the law of the forum; for it is conceded, that a court which has power to say when its doors shall be opened, has also power to say when they shall- be closed.” Kerper v. Wood, 48 Ohio St. 613, 622, 29 N. E. 601, 502. And the principle there announced was followed by the Ohio Supreme Court as late as 1943. Payne v. Kirchwehm, 141 Ohio St. 384, 48 N. E. 2d 224; cf. Cope v. Anderson, ante, p. 461.
Second. Leaving aside the sui generis features of a forum state’s power over limitations of actions in its courts, the present holding violates other established rules concerning a state’s power to govern its own local affairs and to protect from overreaching contracts persons in whom the state has a legitimate interest. See Griffin v. McCoach, 313 U. S. 498; Pink v. A. A. A. Highway Express, 314 U. S. 201. I had considered it well settled that if an insurance company does business at all in a state, its contracts are “subject to such valid regulations as the *631State may choose to adopt.” See Whitfield v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., 205 U. S. 489, 495; Knights Templars’ & Masons’ Life Indemnity Co. v. Jarman, 187 U. S. 197, 202; Hancock Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Warren, 181 U. S. 73, 75. This conception of broad state power has not been limited to particular kinds of laws or particular kinds of contracts of special kinds of insurance companies. Thus in regard to a mutual insurance company, the Court has held the terms of a policy governed by the law of Missouri where the contract was made in the face of a contract stipulation that they were to be governed by the laws of New York, the mutual company’s domicil. New York Life Ins. Co. v. Cravens, 178 U. S. 389. For this Court concluded from inferences it found in the Missouri Court’s opinion that compliance with Missouri law “was a condition upon the right of insurance companies to do business in the State.” Id. at 395. It further held that Missouri had the same continuing power to regulate the business contracts of a foreign corporation permitted to do business there as it had over the contracts of domestic corporations. Id. at 400-401. And when a foreign building and loan association which did business with its members only4 sought to avoid Mississippi usury laws by specifying that a loan contract with a Mississippi member was made in New York where the interest charged was not usurious, this Court held that Mississippi law governed and voided the contract. National Mutual Bldg. & Loan Assn. v. Brahan, 193 U. S. 635. The Court approved the conclusion of the Supreme Court of Mississippi that the association, by qualifying to do business in Mississippi, “had become ‘localized’ in the State, had accepted the laws of the State *632as a condition of doing business there, and could not, nor could [the Mississippi member] 'abrogate by attempted contract stipulations' those laws. See Hancock Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Warren, 181 U. S. 73.” Id. at 650. Because the contract was thus controlled by Mississippi rather than New York law, the Court held that “there is no foundation for the contention that full faith and credit were not given to the public acts and records of New York.” Id. atm.
The Court’s opinion in the present case is apparently inconsistent with the foregoing cases which have established that state courts have a continuing authority to execute the public policy of the state by refusing to enforce contract provisions of foreign corporations permitted by the state to do business there — even though those corporations do business with members only. Today’s opinion does imply, however, that South Dakota officials could have excluded this corporation from doing business in the state or could have revoked its license upon discovery of the foreign corporation’s violation of the laws of the state. I cannot believe that the full faith and credit clause stays the hands of the state courts as instruments of state power in private litigation any more than it could forestall state authorities from revoking the association’s license for persisting in making unlawful contracts.
Third. Another handle of South Dakota’s power over this corporation derives, not from the corporation’s acceptance of South Dakota law as a continuing condition of doing business, but from the number and importance of the incidents involved in the making and the performance of the specific contract here which occurred in South Dakota. Unless the Court’s decision overrules5 the long *633line of cases cited in the margin 6 this insurance contract was “made” and to be performed in South Dakota, and its validity is governed by the law of that state. Thus in Hartford A. & I. Co. v. Delta & Pine Land Co., 292 U. S. 143, 150, Mississippi was required to enforce an insurance contract, unlawful in that state, although both the parties did business there, and although the suit on the contract was brought there, because the contract was valid in Tennessee, the state where the contract was held to have been made and which' had the major connection with the whole transaction. For, said the Court, Mississippi “cannot extend the effect of its laws beyond its borders so as to destroy or impair the right of citizens of other states to make a contract not operative within its jurisdiction, and lawful where made.” Id. at 149.
Before today, contentions that the full faith and credit clause overcomes the power of a state over a contract made and operative there have been flatly rejected by this Court. Thus in American Fire Ins. Co. v. King Lbr. & Mfg. Co., 250 U. S. 2, an insurance company was authorized by Pennsylvania, the state of its incorporation, to write fire insurance on property outside that state. It was not licensed to do business by Florida, but accepted insurance applications through independent brokers there. Under the law of Pennsylvania where the applications were accepted and the policies written, brokers were apparently not authorized to waive contract *634provisions. But under Florida law the brokers were deemed agents of the Pennsylvania company with power to bind it by waivers. In answer to the contention that the Florida ruling denied full faith and credit to the law of Pennsylvania, this Court said that the case does not
“. . . present an attempt of the Florida law to intrude itself into . . . Pennsylvania and control transactions there; it presents simply a Pennsylvania corporation having the permission of that State to underwrite policies on property outside of the State and the exercise of the right in Florida. And necessarily it had to be exercised in accordance with the laws of Florida. There was no law of Pennsylvania to the contrary — no law of Pennsylvania would have power to the contrary. There is no foundation, therefore, for the contention that full faith was not given to a law of Pennsylvania . . . Id. at 10.
Fourth. In interpreting the full faith and credit clause this Court has repeatedly insisted that it would weigh all the interests of each state involved before holding that the full faith and credit clause qualified one state’s power to govern its own affairs. See Pink v. A. A. A. Highway Express, supra, 210-211, and cases there cited; Magnolia Petroleum Company v. Hunt, 320 U. S. 430, 436-437. I have recited the many bases for South Dakota’s legitimate interest. What is the interest of Ohio to which the Court holds South Dakota must give full faith and credit?
It may be that the Court’s view is that Ohio has an interest in securing uniformity of rights and obligations among all the policyholder-members throughout the country. For, says the Court, “If full faith and credit are not given . . . , the mutual rights and obligations of the members of such societies are left subject to the control of each state. They become unpredictable and almost inevitably unequal.”
*635It is true that in situations involving the liability of stockholders for assessment obligations imposed by a corporate charter or the laws of a chartering state, the assessment obligation has been held to be governed by the laws of the chartering state. Converse v. Hamilton, 224 U. S. 243; Broderick v. Rosner, 294 U. S. 629. And assessments against fraternal as well as mutual insurance policyholders based on ownership rights and obligations which their insurance policies, like stock holdings, represent, have been similarly held to be controlled by the law of the state of the corporation’s domicil. Royal Arcanum v. Green, 237 U. S. 531; Hartford Life Ins. Co. v. Barber, 245 U. S. 146; Hartford Life Ins. Co. v. Ibs, 237 U. S. 662. For insofar as a mutual or fraternal insurance policyholder assumes the assessment obligation which a stockholder may bear in other companies, he underwrites the risk that the corporation of which he is an owner might become insolvent. And that insolvency, particularly of an insurance company, would occur and generally become a responsibility of the chartering state where the principal business is conducted. The contingency of insolvency has been thought to give the chartering state greater and more direct interest in the extra-territorial collection of assessments against stockholders of corporations, than a state has in the day-to-day business transactions in which a corporation chartered by it engages in other states.7
*636This line of distinction has been clearly marked by the contrary result this Court has reached in cases concerning day-to-day business contracts made by foreign non-fraternal mutual insurance and membership loan companies with their policyholders and member-borrowers. In New York Life Ins. Co. v. Cravens, supra, at 400, it was urged that the fact that the mutual insurance company there was “ ‘the administrator of a fund collected from the policy holders in different States and countries for their benefit,’ ” demonstrated “the necessity of a uniform law to be stipulated by the parties exempt from the interference or the prohibition of the State where the insurance company is doing business.” This contention was emphatically rejected. And in National Mutual Bldg. & Loan Assn. v. Brahan, supra, 636, 650, this Court, placing considerable reliance upon its previous Craven decision, held that contracts of a membership loan association whose controlling and central purpose, like the distinguishing “feature” relied upon by the Court here, was “to make loans only to its members, and for . . . accumulating a fund to be returned to its members,” were, despite the full faith and credit clause, subject to the law of a state in which the association was doing business as a foreign corporation.
It seems apparent from these authorities that Ohio’s interest in uniform administration of a corporation’s contract obligations for the funds of a company created under its laws is not entitled to full faith and credit merely because of the communal interest of policyholder-members in that fund. And the fact, so heavily stressed by the Court, that the corporation was incorporated under the laws of Ohio so that its continued existence depends upon that law is plainly insufficient basis for a contention that, therefore, Ohio’s interest demands full faith and credit for this contract provision.
*637Actually, it is not Ohio’s interest in the uniform administration of the company’s funds to which the Court gives full faith and credit. For otherwise, I should think, the opinion would cite and distinguish these cases which establish that this interest is not one entitled to full faith and credit. It is the limitations “law” of the corporate constitution enacted to protect its own interest, not the statutes of Ohio, which are held to bar this suit because it was not filed within six months. Thus it seems manifest that the Court is giving full faith and credit to the “laws” and the interest of the Ohio corporation. And the Court does this on the theory that the fraternal corporation’s constitution which governs the terms of its contracts is “subject to amendment through the processes of a representative form of government authorized by the law of the state of incorporation.” Apparently, it is felt that the individual South Dakota policyholder-member can protect himself from overreaching contracts within the framework of this “representative” intracorporate government which is subject to whatever regulation Ohio chooses to impose. Until today I had never conceived of the Federal Constitution as requiring the forty-eight states to give full faith and credit to the laws of private corporations on the theory that a policyholder-member’s ability to protect himself through intra-corporate politics makes state protection of him unnecessary and unconstitutional. It is a naive assumption that a policyholder-member of a fraternal corporation like this does not need protection from his state. Moreover, if valid, this assumption would apply with equal logic to immunize these fraternal corporations from the laws of their domicils.
The conclusion reached by the Court that fraternal insurance companies are entitled to unique constitutional protection is not justified by the language of the Constitution nor by the nature of their enterprise. And our *638previous decisions concerning fraternal insurance companies do not- support the conclusion which the Court draws from the superficial distinguishing characteristics which these companies possess.
As I have pointed out, those cases which hold that assessments against fraternal policyholders in their capacity as stockholders are governed by the law of the company’s domicil, have no relation to a fraternal company’s obligation to a beneficiary of an insurance contract. Moreover, in Sovereign Camp W. O. W. v. Bolin, 305 U. S. 66, heavily relied on by the Court, the fraternal association was freed from liability in a state in which it was not authorized to do business because a judgment of the highest court of the state which had chartered the association had declared, in a class suit to which the claimant had been, in effect, a party, that the policy sued on had been issued ultra vires. Thus the Bolin case is merely a familiar example of enforcement of res judicata under the full faith and credit clause. A judgment of any state, whether chartering state or not, would be entitled to the same respect. Here, of course, there is no judgment to which the claimant was a party which is entitled to full faith and credit. And the power of the Ohio corporation, so far as Ohio law is concerned, to make a contract consistent with South Dakota policy is unquestioned.
The other case relied on heavily by this Court is Modern Woodmen of America v. Mixer, supra. In that case Mixer, the beneficiary, lived in Nebraska. While the record was not wholly clear, the insured had apparently previously lived in South Dakota, and the certificate seems to have been “issued” there. A by-law of the Woodmen, an Illinois association, provided that its certificate should insure against death but that “long continued absence of any member unheard of shall not . . . give any right to recover on any benefit certificate.” *639Nebraska, where Mixer brought the-suit, but in which state the contract had not been made, had a rule of evidence that a presumption of death arises from seven years unexplained absence. Apparently considering the bylaw “unreasonable,” the Supreme Court of Nebraska enforced its long-continued absence rule of evidence and held the association liable. The Supreme Court of Illinois, where the association was chartered, had held the by-law reasonable in that it merely showed a purpose of the association to limit its insurance to death rather than to extend it to long-continued absences. Steen v. Modern Woodmen of America, 296 Ill. 104, 129 N. E. 546. It was on this record that this Court reversed the Nebraska court’s decision in the Mixer case. •
This reversal can be justified on the facts of the Mixer case, which are clearly different from the facts in the case before us. There was no conflict in Mixer between the policy of the state where the contract was made, and Illinois, the state of the association’s domicil. For the contract apparently had been made in a third state, South Dakota, consistently with the laws of that state. Nor does it appear from the record of that case that the association had been licensed to do business so as to accept either the law of the state where the contract was made, or that of Nebraska where the suit was brought. Finally, as I have already indicated, no statute of' limitations was involved in the Mixer case.
But it is said that language of the Mixer case means that the obligations of a fraternal insurance corporation are to be governed by the law of its domicil. If this language means that such an association is privileged to live above the law of the state where it does business, makes contracts, and is sued, I think that language should be repudiated. The purported differences between fraternal insurance companies and other reciprocal, co-opera*640tive and mutual insurers, are too fragmentary and inconsequential to justify any Constitutional difference in treatment. Cf. Hoopeston Canning Co. v. Cullen, 318 U. S. 313.
Neither in the Mixer case nor in the present one does the Court attempt to demonstrate, and I seriously question that a demonstration is possible, that the insurance business of a fraternal company is conducted differently in any important way from that of a mutual, reciprocal, or joint stock company. The insurance phase of this company is set apart from the fraternal phase after election to membership, even though payment of assessments levied for insurance purposes is made compulsory. The provisions of its constitution show that insurance terms and conditions are precisely like those of non-fraternal companies. Insurance funds are administered on a business basis, and they cannot be used for fraternal purposes. In short, the insurance program and activities reveal that this is an insurance company, run like other insurance companies. The only non-paper difference is that insurance is sold only to members of the fraternity.
Nor is it apparent to me that an individual policyholder-member in a remote community exercises any significant influence on the technical insurance aspects of a fraternal company’s business. Certainly, he can no more control the policy contract provisions than could a mutual policyholder or a member of a membership loan association. And the individual member would share as much and no more in the fraternal company’s gains from overreaching contracts as would participants in these indistinguishable associations.
That fraternal-order insurance businesses such as petitioner’s are of a magnitude to move each state to regulate them so as to protect its citizens can hardly be doubted. The best information obtainable shows that in 1944 frater*641nal life insurance businesses in the United States had aggregate assets of almost $1,500,000,000; income of $255,600,000; $6,794,300,000 insurance in force; and 7,582,000 outstanding certificates. During 1944 they spent $43,300,000 for agents and management.8 There is, thus, every reason for giving the same force and effect to state regulation of fraternal insurance companies as is given regulation of all other insurance businesses.
Fifth. I fear that it may be significant that the Court has conspicuously refrained from stating in unmistakable terms that its new doctrine applies only to fraternal insurance companies. If, as the Court holds, the interest of Ohio or of its corporate creature does outweigh the interest of every state in which that creature does business, I see no sound basis in the facts or in the authorities cited by the Court for declining to apply this formula to almost every type of business corporation created in one state and doing business in another.
The effect of such a doctrine on the rights of states to govern themselves is graphically demonstrated by the insurance business. The five largest legal reserve life insurance companies in the United States, with total assets of approximately $15,000,000,000, have their home offices in or near New York and Connecticut. United States v. South-Eastern Underwriters Assn., 322 U. S. 533, 541. The result of the Court’s opinion, if later carried to its logical conclusion, would be that the policy obligations of all of these companies, in whatever state assumed, would be governed by New York or Connecticut law or that of nearby states, and that all of the other states would be deprived of power to pass legislation believed by them to be necessary to protect their own citizens against un*642conscionable contracts. By permitting its insurance corporations, particularly mutual companies, to make contracts barring an insured’s access to state courts, New York, for example, could thus render all the other states helpless to provide a judicial haven for their own wronged citizens.
Such a doctrine is not only novel; it is revolutionary. I think the doctrine violates the very Constitution that it is our duty to interpret. For the Court today, in part, nullifies a great purpose of the original Constitution, as later expressed in the Tenth Amendment, to leave the several states free to govern themselves in their domestic affairs. Hereafter, if today’s doctrine should be carried to its logical end, the state in which the most powerful corporations are concentrated, or those corporations themselves, might well be able to pass laws which would govern contracts made by the people in all of the other states.
I would affirm this judgment.

 Townsend, v. Jemison, 9 How. 407, 410; Bank of Alabama v. Dalton, 9 How. 522, 528; Bacon v. Howard, 20 How. 22, 25; Christmas v. Russell, 5 Wall. 290, 300; Amy v. Dubuque, 98 U. S. 470, 471; Campbell v. Holt, 115 U. S. 620, 626; Campbell v. Haverhill, 155 U. S. 610, 618. See also Chase Securities Corp. v. Donaldson, 325 U. S. 304; Michigan Ins. Bank v. Eldred, 130 U. S. 693; Bank of United States v. Donnally, 8 Pet. 361; M’Cluny v. Silliman, 3 Pet. 270.

 The Court also refers to Hartford A. & I. Co. v. Delta & Pine Land Co., 292 U. S. 143, and Home Ins. Co. v. Dick, 281 U. S. 397. The Court does not rest its decision on the due process clause. But the decisions in those cases went on the due process clause, and, far from supporting the holdings here, are actually inconsistent with it. If they are to be followed they stand for the propositions that a state which has no interest at all, or only a minor interest, in the transaction sued on cannot, because of the mere accident of supplying the judicial forum, apply its own statute of limitations so as to defeat the terms of a contract valid in the jurisdiction where the obligation was initiated, negotiated, and completed. The two cases cast considerable doubt on Ohio’s power to have applied its limitation statute had this suit been filed there; conversely, they provide rather persuasive argument to support a contention that South Dakota’s statute should control liability here in view of that state’s considerable interest, even beyond that of providing the forum of this action.

 The Court takes the view that it is well established that a contract provision limiting the time within which suit can be brought may override a state’s statute of limitations providing a longer period. For this proposition it cites Riddlesbarger v. Hartford Ins. Co., 7 Wall. 386. That case came from a Federal Circuit Court in Missouri where the sole problem posed or decided was whether under Missouri law or general federal law a contract- limitation violated the policy of Missouri expressed,in its statute of limitations. But see Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U. S. 99. There was no full faith and credit question, due process question, or. any other constitutional question. M’Elmoyle v. Cohen, supra, was not cited in the Riddlesbarger case. Nor was it relevant because no foreign law was put forward which might require Missouri to give full faith and credit to it.

 “The purpose of the Association is to make loans only to its members, and for the further purpose of accumulating a fund to be returned to its members who do not receive advances on-their shares.” National Mutual Bldg. & Loan Assn. v. Brahan, 193 U. S. 635, 636.

 The Court purports not to overrule these cases for it states: “. . . [W]e do not rely upon the place of concluding the contract of membership or upon the place prescribed for its performance.”

 Hoopeston Canning Co. v. Cullen, 318 U. S. 313; Osborn v. Ozlin, 310 U. S. 53; Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Johnson, 293 U. S. 335, 339; Northwestern Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. McCue, 223 U. S. 234, 246-248; Whitfield v. Aetna Life Ins. Co., supra, 495; Knights Templars’ & Masons’ Life Indemnity Co. v. Jarman, supra; Chattanooga National Bldg. & Loan Assn. v. Denson, 189 U. S. 408; National Bldg. & Loan Assn. v. Brahan, supra; Wall v. Equitable Life Assur. Soc., 32 F. 273, affirmed sub nom. Equitable Life Society v. Clements, 140 U. S. 226.

 This contrast is dramatized by the consequences to Ohio’s interest in the injury which would flow from South Dakota’s disregard for this contract limitation which violates South Dakota’s public policy. It is certainly a tenuous thread which would link South Dakota’s refusal to enforce this and similar limitations to the undue depletion of the corporate funds. For it is unlikely that in calculating rates and risks, actuaries took into account the chance that the company might escape paying just claims because of company-imposed limitations on the time for bringing suit. On the other hand recovery of insurance claims often saves insurance beneficiaries from becoming public charges of the state of their residence.

 Statistical Abstract of the United States, Dept, of Commerce, Bureau of the Census (1946) 442.