Margaret Williamson v. Katherine Osenton
| Decision Date | 09 March 1914 |
| Docket Number | No. 634,634 |
| Citation | 232 U.S. 619,34 S.Ct. 442,58 L.Ed. 758 |
| Parties | MARGARET H. WILLIAMSON v. KATHERINE OSENTON |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. W. E. Chilton, S. W. Walker, and A. O. Bacon for Margaret H. Williamson.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 619-623 intentionally omitted] Messrs. R. G. Linn, C. Beverley Broun, and Connor Hall for Katherine osenton.
This case comes here upon the certified question whether the plaintiff, when she began this suit, was a citizen of Virginia in such sense as to be entitled to maintain her action in the district court of the United States for the southern district of West Virginia. The plaintiff (the defendant in error) at that time was the wife of a citizen of West Virginia, but, in consequence of his adultery, as she alleged, had separated from him and had gone to Virginia. Before bringing this action she had brought a suit in West Virginia for divorce, and pending the present proceeding obtained a divorce a vinculo. This action is for damages, alleging the defendant to have been a party to the adultery. The defendant pleaded to the jurisdiction, setting up the plaintiff's marriage and the residence of her husband in West Virginia; in other words, that the requisite diversity of citizenship did not exist. The plea seems to have been heard upon a written statement of facts in which it was agreed that the plaintiff went to Virginia 'with the intention of making her home in that state for an indefinite time in order that she might institute this suit against the defendant in the United States court,' together with the facts already stated. The plea was overruled, there was a trial on the merits, at which the plaintiff got a verdict for $35,000, and thereupon the case was taken to the circuit court of appeals, from which the certified question comes.
On these facts the question certified is divided into two by the argument: first, whether, if able so to do, the plaintiff had changed her domicil from West Virginia to Virginia in fact; and, second, supposing that she had changed it so far as to have enabled her to proceed against her husband in Virginia had she been so minded, whether for other purposes her domicil did not remain that of her husband until the divorce was obtained, which was after the beginning of the present suit. Premising that if the plaintiff was domiciled in Virginia when this suit was begun, she was a citizen of that state within the meaning of the Constitution, art. 3, § 2, and the Judicial Code of March 3, 1911, chap. 231, 36 Stat. at L. 1087, U. S. Comp. Stat. Supp. 1911, p. 128 (Gassies v. Ballon, 6 Pet. 761, 8 L. ed. 573; Boyd v. Nebraska, 143 U. S. 135, 161, 36 L. ed. 103, 109, 12 Sup. Ct. Rep. 375; Minor v. Happersett, 21 Wall. 162, 22 L. ed. 627), we will take these questions up in turn.
The essential fact that raises a change of abode to a change of domicil is the absence of any intention to live elsewhere (Story, Conflict of Laws, § 43); or, as Mr. Dicey puts it in his admirable book, 'the absence of any present intention of not residing permanently or indefinitely in' the new abode. Confl. L. 2d ed. 111. We may admit that if this case had been before a jury on testimony merely that the plaintiff intended to live in Virginia for an indefinite time, it might have been argued that the motive assigned for the change, the bringing of this action, showed that the plaintiff, even if telling the literal truth, only meant that she could not tell when the lawsuit would end. It is to be noticed also that the divorce proceedings were carried through in West Virginia, though it is fair to assume that they were begun before the plaintiff moved. But the case was submitted to the court upon a written statement, upon which we presume both sides expected the court to rule. To give the supposed ambiguous meaning to the words 'for an indefinite time' in that statement would be to assume that the parties were trying to get the better of each other by a quibble. We must take them to mean: for a time to which the...
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