Burch v. Burch, 10518.

• Decision Date: 16 April 1952
• Docket Number: No. 10518.,10518.
• Citation: 195 F.2d 799
• Parties: BURCH v. BURCH
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Third Circuit

195 F.2d 799 (1952)

BURCH v. BURCH

No. 10518.

United States Court of Appeals Third Circuit.

Argued February 11, 1952.

Argued February 11, 1952.

Decided April 16, 1952.

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Ruth M. Burch, pro se.

David E. Maas, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, for appellee.

Before MARIS, MAGRUDER and STALEY, Circuit Judges.

Argued at Charlotte Amalie February 11, 1952.

MARIS, Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff, Joseph E. Burch, Jr., filed a complaint against his wife, the defendant, Ruth Miriam Burch, in the District Court of the Virgin Islands, Division of St. Thomas and St John, seeking a divorce on the ground of incompatibility of temperament. The defendant filed an answer in which she sought the dismissal of the plaintiff's complaint and a counterclaim seeking a divorce and alimony upon the ground of her husband's cruel treatment of her. At the demand of the defendant, acquiesced in by the plaintiff, the case was tried in the District Court by a jury of six,¹ which rendered a verdict in favor of the plaintiff. Following the verdict the District Court entered a decree approving it and granting an absoute divorce to the plaintiff. The defendant thereupon took the appeal now before us.

At the outset we are confronted with the question whether an action for divorce may be tried to a jury under the law of the Virgin Islands. Section 1 of the Divorce Law of the Virgin Islands, the full text of which is set out in a footnote,² provides that an action for the dissolution of the marriage contract is "an action of equitable nature". Chapter 38 of Title III of the Code of Laws of the Municipality of St. Thomas and St. John provides the procedure for the trial of issues in actions of an equitable nature. Section 1 of that chapter provides that in such actions "Both issues of law and fact shall be tried by the court, unless referred to a referee, provided however, the court may, in its discretion, order a jury to inquire into a fact and render a verdict as to such fact."³ Reference to a referee is provided for by Chapter 19 of Title III, while Section 6, Chapter 1, Title I, authorizes the judge of the District Court to empower the District Court Commissioner to hear the testimony in designated categories of civil cases and report his findings to the judge.

It will thus be seen that the procedural law in the Virgin Islands applicable to actions for divorce requires that issues of fact shall be tried by the court, unless referred to a referee or to the District Court Commissioner, and that a jury may be employed only to make findings as to particular facts. Here the jury was not so employed. On the contrary the case was tried as an ordinary civil jury action and all the issues of fact were submitted to the jury to be determined by a single verdict in favor of the plaintiff or the defendant. This general reference of all the issues in the case to a jury was unwarranted and the verdict rendered by the jury was, therefore, without legal effect. The decree entered thereon must accordingly be set aside unless we are able to conclude, after the review of the record de novo which it is our duty to undertake on this appeal,⁴ that the evidence fairly establishes the existence of a state of facts which under the applicable rules of law will support the decree which the District Court entered on the verdict. We turn, therefore, to consider the issues of fact and law which the case presents.

At the outset we are confronted with a question of jurisdiction. Under our system of law, judicial power to grant a divorce is founded on domicile. Williams v. North Carolina, 1945, 325 U.S. 226, 229, 65 S.Ct. 1092, 89 L.Ed. 1577. Accordingly the domicile of at least one of the spouses must be within a state or territory in order to give the courts of that state or territory power to dissolve the marriage. Section 9 of the Divorce Law of the Virgin Islands provides that the plaintiff in an action for the dissolution of marriage "must be an inhabitant of the district at the commencement of the action and for six weeks prior thereto, which residence shall be sufficient to give the Court jurisdiction". In the light of the rule of law to which we have referred the words "inhabitant" and "residence" as used in the statute must be taken to mean "domiciliary" and "domicile" respectively. It follows that in order to support a decree for divorce in the Virgin Islands there must be a finding by the District Court that the plaintiff was domiciled in the Virgin Islands at the commencement of the action and for six weeks prior thereto. Domicile is a familiar concept in the law⁵ upon which we think it unnecessary to elaborate other than to point out that it involves the idea of a residence sufficiently permanent that its termination is not presently contemplated. Jurisdiction to decree a divorce is not conferred upon the court by a mere temporary residence in the district which is accompanied by a present intention on the part of the plaintiff to leave the Islands as soon as a divorce is granted.

The uncontradicted evidence in this case supports a finding that the plaintiff satisfied the statutory requirement of domicile in the Virgin Islands. He is an electrical engineer. He had been employed by the Mine Grande Oil Company in Venezuela. He left Venezuela in May, 1950 and later gave up his employment with the oil company. About the first of July he came to St. Thomas where he secured employment with the Power Authority under contract to maintain their switchboard and to assist in technical problems which might arise in the telephone system. He was also employed by the Caribbean Enterprise Corporation to help with the work on the cable system for the new telephone system. This suit was begun on August 31, 1950. He testified at the trial on April 16, 1951 that he had lived in St. Thomas nine or ten months and was engaged in the employment above mentioned. We conclude that the District Court had jurisdiction to entertain the suit.

The plaintiff's suit is based upon the ground of incompatibility of temperament. This was one of the grounds of divorce recognized in the Code of Laws of the Municipality of St. Thomas and St. John as originally enacted by the Colonial Council of the Municipality in 1921⁶ and was carried over into the Divorce Law enacted by the Legislative Assembly in 1944. The Virgin Islands was the first American jurisdiction to adopt incompatibility as a ground for divorce, being followed in 1933 by New Mexico⁷ and in 1935 by Alaska.⁸

Under the Danish law which was in force in the Islands at the time of the adoption of the codes in 1920 and 1921 divorce upon grounds analogous to incompatibility of temperament had been recognized.⁹ Accordingly the inclusion of this ground in the codes did not involve a radical innovation in these Islands. On the contrary there is strong ground for thinking that it was inspired by the preexisting Danish law. The codes adopted by the Colonial Councils of the two Virgin Islands municipalities in 1920 and 1921 were taken largely from the codes of the Territory of Alaska¹⁰ and Title III, chapter 44, Section 7, of each code (which sections have now been incorporated in Section 7 of the 1944 Act) contained the whole of Section 1299 of the Code of Civil Procedure of Alaska¹¹ verbatim. The latter section set forth only six grounds for divorce, however, while the section as enacted in the Virgin Islands codes contained eight, the two additional grounds being insanity occurring after marriage and incompatibility of temperament. Since these were grounds then unknown to the Alaska law but recognized under the Danish law then in force in the Islands it would seem most likely that they were added to preserve that existing law. This background throws light upon the intended meaning of the phrase as a statutory ground for divorce in the Virgin Islands. The decisions of the Supreme Court of New Mexico construing a similar provision of the divorce law of that state are also helpful in this connection.¹² We conclude that while incompatibility of temperament in the Virgin Islands Divorce Law does not refer to those petty quarrels and minor bickerings which are but the evidence of that frailty which all humanity is heir to, it unquestionably does refer to conflicts in personalities and dispositions so deep as to be irreconcilable and to render it impossible for the parties to continue a normal marital relationship with each other. To use the ancient Danish phrase, the disharmony of the spouses in their common life must be so deep and intense as to be irremediable. It is the legal recognition of the proposition long established in the earlier Danish law of the Islands that if the parties are so mismated that their marriage has in fact ended as the result of their hopeless disagreement and discord the courts should be empowered to terminate it as a matter of law.

The evidence in this case, the details of which it would serve no useful purpose to recount, supports a finding of the existence of such a state of incompatibility of temperament between the parties. The statute, however, provides that a divorce may only be granted at the instance of the "injured party". We must, therefore, determine whether the plaintiff has met the burden of showing that he was an injured party in the sense contemplated by the statute.

First we must consider whether the statutory phrase "injured party"¹³ means not only one who is injured by the grounds alleged for divorce but also one who is innocent of any conduct which would afford his or her spouse grounds for divorce. We think that the divorce law of the Virgin Islands does not impose such a burden upon a plaintiff in divorce. The statute does not require, as do some divorce laws,¹⁴ that suit must be brought by the innocent and injured party. Moreover it is perfectly clear that in the case of at least two of the grounds for divorce recognized by ...