Hughes v. Fetter

• Decision Date: 04 June 1951
• Docket Number: No. 355,355
• Parties: HUGHES v. FETTER et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

341 U.S. 609

71 S.Ct. 980

95 L.Ed. 1212

HUGHES

v FETTER et al.

No. 355.

Argued March 1, 2, 1951.

Decided June 4, 1951.

Mr Samuel Goldenberg, Milwaukee, Wis., for appellants.

Mr. Herbert L. Wible, Milwaukee, Wis., for appellees.

Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

Basing his complaint on the Illinois wrongful death statute,¹ appellant administrator brought this action in the Wisconsin state court to recover damages for the death of Harold Hughes, who was fatally injured in an automobile accident in Illinois. The allegedly negligent driver and an insurance company were named as defendants. On their motion the trial court entered summary judgment 'dismissing the complaint on the merits.' It held that a Wisconsin statute, which creates a right of action only for deaths caused in that state, establishes a local public policy against Wisconsin's entertaining suits brought under the wrongful death acts of other states.² The Wisconsin Supreme Court affirmed, notwithstanding the contention that the local statute so construed violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause of Art. IV, § 1 of the Constitution.³ The case is properly here on appeal under 28 U.S.C. § 1257.

We are called upon to decide the narrow question whether Wisconsin, over the objection raised, can close the doors of its courts to the cause of action created by the Illinois wrongful death act.⁴ Prior decisions have established that the Illinois statute is a 'public act' within the provision of Art. IV, § 1 that 'Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts * * * of every other State.'⁵ It is also settled that Wisconsin cannot escape this constitutional obligation to enforce the rights and duties validly created under the laws of other states by the simple device of removing jurisdiction from courts otherwise competent.⁶ We have recognized, however, that full faith and credit does not automatically compel a forum state to subordinate its own statutory policy to a conflicting public act of another state; rather, it is for this Court to choose in each case between the competing public policies involved.⁷ The clash of interests in cases of this type has usually been described as a conflict be- tween the public policies of two or more states.⁸ The more basic conflict involved in the present appeal, however, is as follows: On the one hand is the strong unifying principle embodied in the Full Faith and Credit Clause looking toward maximum enforcement in each state of the obligations or rights created or recognized by the statutes of sister states;⁹ on the other hand is the policy of Wisconsin, as interpreted by its highest court, against permitting Wisconsin courts to entertain this wrongful death action.¹⁰

We hold that Wisconsin's policy must give way. That state has no real feeling of antagonism against wrongful death suits in general.¹¹ To the contrary, a forum is regularly provided for cases of this nature, the exclusionary rule extending only so far as to bar actions for death not caused locally.¹² The Wisconsin policy, moreover, cannot be considered as an application of the forum non conveniens doctrine, whatever effect that doctrine might be given if its use resulted in denying enforcement to public acts of other states. Even if we assume that Wisconsin could refuse, by reason of particular circumstances, to hear foreign controversies to which nonresidents were parties,¹³ the present case is not one lacking a close relationship with the state. For not only were appellant, the decedent and the individual defendant all residents of Wisconsin, but also appellant was appointed administrator and the corporate defendant was created under Wisconsin laws. We also think it relevant, although not crucial here, that Wisconsin may well be the only jurisdiction in which service could be had as an original matter on the insurance company defendant.¹⁴ And while in the present case jurisdiction over the individual defendant apparently could be had in Illinois by substituted service,¹⁵ in other cases Wisconsin's exclusionary statute might amount to a deprivation of all opportunity to enforce valid death claims created by another state.

Under these circumstances, we conclude that Wisconsin's statutory policy which excludes this Illinois cause of action is forbidden by the national policy of the Full Faith and Credit Clause.¹⁶ The judgment is reversed and the cause is remanded to the Supreme Court of Wisconsin for proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

Reversed and remanded.

Mr. Justice FRANKFURTER, whom Mr. Justice REED, Mr. Justice JACKSON, and Mr. Justice MINTON, join, dissenting.

This is an action brought in the Wisconsin State courts to recover for the wrongful death of Harold G. Hughes. Hughes was killed in an automobile accident in Illinois. An Illinois statute provides that an action may be brought to recover damages for a wrongful death occurring in that State. Smith-Hurd's Ill.Ann.Stat. c. 70, §§ 1, 2. A Wisconsin statute provides that an action may not be brought in the courts of that State for a wrongful death occurring outside Wisconsin. Wis.Stat., 1949, § 331.03. The Wisconsin courts, obeying the command of the Wisconsin statute, dismissed the action. I cannot agree that the Wisconsin statute, so applied, is contrary to Art. IV, § 1 of the United States Constitution: 'Full Faith and Credit shall be given in each State to the public Acts, Records, and judicial Proceedings of every other State.'

The Full Faith and Credit Clause was derived from a similar provision in the Articles of Confederation. Art. IV, par. 3. The only clue to its meaning in the available records of the Constitutional Convention is a notation in Madison's Debates that 'Mr. Wilson & Docr. Johnson (who became members of the committee to which the provision was referred) supposed the meaning to be that Judgments in one State should be the ground of actions in other States, & that acts of the Legislatures should be included, for the sake of Acts of insolvency etc—.' II Farrand, The Records of the Federal Convention, 447. This Court has, with good reason, gone far in requiring that the courts of a State respect judgments entered by courts of other States. Fauntleroy v. Lum, 210 U.S. 230, 28 S.Ct. 641, 52 L.Ed. 1039; Kenney v. Supreme Lodge, 252 U.S. 411, 40 S.Ct. 371, 64 L.Ed. 638; Milwaukee County v. M. E. White Co., 296 U.S. 268, 56 S.Ct. 229, 80 L.Ed. 220; cf. Magnolia Petroleum Co. v. Hunt, 320 U.S. 430, 64 S.Ct. 208, 88 L.Ed. 149. But the extent to which a State must recognize and enforce the rights of action created by other States is not so clear.

1. In the field of commercial law—where certainty is of high importance—we have often imposed a rather rigid rule that a State must defer to the law of the State of incorporation, or to the law of the place of contract. Thus, in Broderick v. Rosner, 294 U.S. 629, 55 S.Ct. 589, 79 L.Ed. 1100, we held that New Jersey could not close its courts to suits which involved stockholder liability arising under the laws of New York. We had already said, in Converse v. Hamilton, 224 U.S. 243, 260, 32 S.Ct. 415, 419, 56 L.Ed. 749, that such liability was 'peculiarly within the regulatory power' of the State of incorporation; 'so much so that no other State properly can be said to have any public policy thereon.' In John Hancock Mut. Life Insurance Co. v. Yates, 299 U.S. 178, 57 S.Ct. 129, 81 L.Ed. 106, we held that the Georgia courts had to give full faith and credit to a New York parole evidence statute which prevented recovery on an insurance contract made in New York. In both these cases, the Court, speaking through Mr. Justice Brandeis, emphasized that it was the particular relationship involved which made the Full Faith and Credit Clause applicable.

In Pink v. A.A.A. Highway Express, 314 U.S. 201, 62 S.Ct. 241, 86 L.Ed. 152, the Court found that the Full Faith and Credit Clause did not require the courts of the forum to enforce, against local policyholders, assessments valid under the laws of the state of incorporation of a mutual insurance company. In Griffin v. McCoach, 313 U.S. 498, 61 S.Ct. 1023, 85 L.Ed. 1481, we decided that the forum may decline to enforce an insurance policy in favor of beneficiaries who have no insurable interest under local law. Order of United Commercial Travelers v. Wolfe, 331 U.S. 586, 67 S.Ct. 1355, 91 L.Ed. 1687, seems to have made it clear, however, that these decisions did not represent a radical departure from the earlier cases. We held in the Wolfe case that the forum was required to give full faith and credit to a law of the state of incorporation allowing a fraternal benefit society to limit the duration of its liability. It is not merely a bit of rhetoric to caution against imposing on the courts of the forum a 'state of vassalage.' Hawkins v. Barney's Lessee, 5 Pet. 457, 467, 8 L.Ed. 190, quoted in Order of United Commercial Travelers v. Wolfe, supra, 331 U.S. at page 627, 67 S.Ct. at page 1374, 91 L.Ed. 1687, dissenting opinion. But this consideration of autonomy is not sufficient to overcome the advantages to be obtained from a degree of certainty in corporate and commercial law.

2. In cases involving workmen's compensation, there is also a pre-existing relationship between the employer and employee that makes certainty of result desirable. The possible interest of the forum in protecting the workman, however, has made this Court reluctant to impose rigid rules. In Bradford Electric Light Co. v. Clapper, 286 U.S. 145, 52 S.Ct. 571, 76 L.Ed. 1026, suit was brought in New Hampshire to recover for the wrongful death of an employee occurring in New Hampshire. We held, in an opinion by Mr. Justice Brandeis, that the court sitting in New Hampshire would have to dismiss the action because workmen's compensation was an exclusive remedy under the laws of Vermont, where the contract of employment was made, where the employment was usually carried on,...