Canadian Northern Ry Co v. Eggen

• Decision Date: 19 April 1920
• Docket Number: No. 281,281
• Citation: 64 L.Ed. 713,252 U.S. 553,40 S.Ct. 402
• Parties: CANADIAN NORTHERN RY. CO. v. EGGEN
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

252 U.S. 553

40 S.Ct. 402

64 L.Ed. 713

CANADIAN NORTHERN RY. CO.

v EGGEN.

No. 281.

Argued March 1, 1920.

Decided April 19, 1920.

Mr. Wm. D. Mitchell, of St. Paul, Minn., for petitioner.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 554-557 intentionally omitted] Mr. Ernest A. Michel, of Ninneapolis, Minn., for respondent.

[Argument of Counsel from Pages 557-558 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice CLARKE delivered the opinion of the Court.

The only question presented for decision in this case is as to the validity of section 7709 of the Statutes of Minnesota (General Statutes of Minnesota 1913), which reads:

'When a cause of action has arisen outside of this state, and, by the laws of the place where it arose, an action thereon is there barred by lapse of time, no such action shall be maintained in this state unless the plaintiff be a citizen of the state who has owned the cause of action ever since it accrued.'

The Circuit Court of Appeals, reversing the District Court, held this statute invalid for the reason that the exemption in favor of citizens of Minnesota rendered it repugnant to article 4, section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, which declares that——

'The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.'

The action was commenced in the District Court of the United States for the District of Minnesota, Second Division, by the respondent, a citizen of North Dakota, against the petitioner, a corporation organized under the laws of the Dominion of Canada, to recover damages for personal injuries sustained by him on November 29, 1913, when employed by the petitioner as a switchman in its yards at Humboldt, in the province of Saskatchewan. The respondent, a citizen and resident of North Dakota, went to Canada and entered the employ of the petitioner as a switchman a short time prior to the accident complained of. He remained in Canada for six months after the accident and then returned to live in North Dakota. He commenced this action on October 15, 1915, almost two years after the date of the accident. By the laws of Canada, where the cause of action arose, an action of this kind must be commenced within one year from the time injury was sustained. If the statute of Minnesota, above quoted, is valid, it is applicable to the action, which, being barred in Canada, cannot be maintained in Minnesota by a nonresident plaintiff. If, however, the statute is invalid, the general statute of limitations of Minnesota, allowing a period of six years within which to commence action, would be applicable. The record properly presents the claim of the petitioner that the Circuit Court of Appeals erred in holding the statute involved unconstitutional and void.

It is plain that the act assailed was not enacted for the purpose of creating an arbitrary or vexatious discrimination against nonresidents of Minnesota.

It has been in force ever since the state was admitted into the Union in 1858; it is in terms precisely the same as those of several other states, and in substance it does not differ from those of many more. It gives a nonresident the same rights in the Minnesota courts as a resident citizen has, for a time equal to that of the statute of limitations where his cause of action arose. If a residet citizen acquires such a cause of action after it has accrued, his rights are limited precisely as those of the nonresident are, by the laws of the place where it arose. If the limitation of the foreign state is equal to or longer than that of the Minnesota statute, the nonresident's position is as favorable as that of the citizen.

It is only when the foreign limitation is shorter than that of Minnesota, and when the nonresident who owns the cause of action from the time when it arose has slept on his rights until it is barred in the foreign state (which happens to be the respondent's case), that inequality results—and for this we are asked to declare a statute unconstitutional which has been in force for 60 years.

This court has never attempted to formulate a comprehensive list of the rights included within the 'privileges and immunities' clause of the Constitution (article 4, § 2), but it has repeatedly approved as authoritative the statement by Mr. Justice Washington, in 1825, in Corfield v. Coryell, 4 Wash. C. C. 371, 380, Fed. Cas. No. 3,230 (the first federal case in which this clause was considered), saying:

'We feel no hesitation in confining these expressions to those privileges and immunities which are, in their nature, fundamental.' Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 75, 21 L. Ed. 394; Blake v. McClung, 172 U. S. 239, 248, 19 Sup. Ct. 165, 43 L. Ed. 432; Chambers v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R. Co., 207 U. S. 142, 155, 28 Sup. Ct. 34, 52 L. Ed. 143.

In the Corfield Case the court included in a partial list of such fundamental privileges 'the right of a citizen of one state * * * to institute and maintain actions of any kind in the courts of' another.

The state of Minnesota, in the statute we are considering, recognized this right of citizens of other states to institute and maintain suits in its courts as a fundamental right, protected by the Constitution, and for one year from the time his cause of action accrued the respondent was given all of the...