Court Opinion

ID: 9808130
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 20:28:50.675223+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T12:09:10.320035
License: Public Domain

Walker, J.,
concurring in result only. I concur in the conclusion of the Court that there was error in refusing to permit the plaintiff to amend his complaint upon the ground of a want of power. He alleged facts which would have constituted a good cause of action under the statute of Virginia, if the statute had been pleaded. It is, of course, necessary to “allege and prove the foreign statute in order to recover (Hooker v. Moore, 50 N. C., 130), but the failure to allege it is not necessarily fatal, as it is merely the omission of an averment essential to fill out and complete the cause of action. The failure to plead the statute was evidently an inadvertence, as counsel knew very well that the plaintiff could not recover at common law, because it is one of its leading maxims that a personal right of action dies with the person — actio personalis moritur cum persona — -and that he could not recover under our statute, because it can have no extra-territorial operation. The presumption must be that they intended to sue under the statute of Virginia, as the death occurred there and is alleged to have been caused by a negligent act committed there, and an action for the value of a life thus taken can be given only by the statute law of the place where the death occurred. The cause of action, therefore, is not so inherently defective on its face that it cannot be cured by amendment, for it is of such a nature- as to be capable of being made good by alleging and showing the local law which would impart vitaility to the facts already alleged. Such an amendment is, in no reasonable view, the statement of a new cause of action. The right of amendment is denied only when the Court can see that it is *97impossible for tbe cause of action to be perfected, or, to express tbe idea a little differently, when it appears affirmatively that there is not, and cannot be, a cause of action. But when the proposed amendment is germane to the facts already stated and does not entirely change their nature, the party will be allowed to reform the pleading, not to state a new cause of action, but to perfect one which has been imperfectly alleged.
I do not think though that the cases of The New York, 175 U. S., 187, and Steamship Co. v. Ins. Co., 129 U. S., 447, are authorities in support of the right of amendment. They were cases in the Court of Admiralty and were decided upon the rule prevailing in that court — that where merits clearly appear on the record a party will be allowed to assert his rights in a new allegation, and the necessary amendment for that purpose will even be permitted in the appellate court, under certain circumstances, without remanding the case. The difference between the practice in Common Law and Admiralty Courts in this respect is pointed out in my dissenting opinion in State v. Marsh, 134 N. C., 189, and the authorities cited, and for convenience I refer to it, instead of repeating in this opinion what is there said.
While I assent to the conclusion of the Court, I cannot by my silence give implied approval to what is said as to the presumption of law that there is a statute in another State substantially like ours. There is, in my opinion, no such presumption, and it has been so ruled by this Court for many years and in a long and unbroken line of cases in which the rights involved were or could be only statutory, as they did not exist at common law. In Hooper v. Moore, 50 N. C., 130, the Court, by Pearson J., says: “What is the law of another State or of a foreign country is as much *98‘a question of law’ as what is tbe law of our own State. There is this difference, however: The Court is presumed to know judicially the public laws of our State, while in respect to private laws and the laws of other States and foreign countries this knowledge is not presumed; it follows that the existence of the, latter must be alleged and proved as facts, for otherwise the Court can not know or take notice of them. This is familiar learning. 3 Wooddenson Lec., 175.” To the same effect are the following cases: Knight v. Wall, 19 N. C., 125; Moore v. Gwynn, 27 N. C., 187; State v. Jackson, 13 N. C., 564; Hilliard v. Outlaw, 92 N. C., 266. The settled doctrine of this Court might be convincingly shown by multiplying the cases, but I do not deem it necessary to do so, as the numerous decisions upon the subject are perfectly familiar to us. I do not think the principle established by this Court should be questioned, even by an intimation that it can be open to doubt, and, therefore, to discussion. Referring to the rule as thus adopted by this Court, Minor, in his excellent treatise on the Conflict of Laws, at page 531, says: “If the foreign law in issue is the unwritten law of a State not originally subject to the common law, or, in any event, if it is a statute or written law, the above presumption does not apply, and, in strictness, it would seem that there were no other probabilities one way or the other in general that would justify any presumption as to the foreign law. Under this view, it is a fact open to inquiry, susceptible of proof, and, like any other material fact, must be proved, in order to sustain the allegations. 'Without such proof, the case of the defense founded thereon simply falls to the ground. To this strictly logical view- some of the courts have subscribed.”
In the cases of The New York and Steamship Co. v. Ins. Co., supra, cited in'the opinion of the Court, it is said: *99“The rale that the courts of one country can not take cognizance of the law of another without plea and proof, has been constantly maintained at law and in equity in England and America.” And again: “Upon all principles of common jurisprudence, foreign law is always to be proved as a fact.”
In the absence of any proof of a statute or of any change of the common law in another State, it is always presumed in the Courts of this State that the common law as administered in our courts prevails there. Griffin v. Carter, 40 N. C., 413 Brown v. Pratt, 56 N. C., 202. But this presumption, as I have shown, does not obtain as to the statute law.
I am requested to state that Mr. Justice Connor concurs in this opinion.