Martel v. Stafford

• Decision Date: 09 April 1993
• Docket Number: No. 92-2286,92-2286
• Citation: 992 F.2d 1244
• Parties: Scott MARTEL, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. George F. STAFFORD, Administrator, etc., et al., Defendants, Appellees. . Heard
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — First Circuit

Page 1244

992 F.2d 1244

Scott MARTEL, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. George F. STAFFORD, Administrator, etc., et al., Defendants Appellees.

No. 92-2286.

United States Court of Appeals First Circuit.

Heard April 9, 1993.

Decided May 25, 1993.

Kenneth J. Chesebro, Cambridge, MA, with whom Robert E. Manchester, Patricia S. Orr, and Manchester Law Offices, P.C., Burlington, UT, were on brief, for plaintiff, appellant.

Christopher S. Williams, with whom Griffin & Goulka, Boston, MA, was on brief, for defendants, appellees.

Before BREYER, Chief Judge, SELYA and STAHL, Circuit Judges.

SELYA, Circuit Judge.

This appeal could do double duty as a law school examination question. It follows a district court's dismissal of the third action brought by plaintiff-appellant Scott Martel in what has been a consistently unsuccessful effort to stay in court long enough to recover damages for personal injuries sustained in an automobile accident. Because the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over the sole defendant, a foreign executor sued as such, we affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Leaving to one side the seepage from the geographical morass in which this case is mired, the prefatory facts are straightforward. On April 18, 1985, an accident occurred on a Vermont highway. Martel, a Vermont resident, sustained injuries when an automobile in which he was riding collided with a vehicle driven by Wilhelmina S. Parker. Parker, a citizen of Maryland who was in the process of moving into a new home in Vermont, perished two days later as an aftermath of the crash. She died testate, owning property located exclusively in Maryland and Vermont. Pursuant to her will, probate courts in both jurisdictions appointed George F. Stafford, a Massachusetts resident, as executor. Letters of administration were issued to Stafford in Maryland on May 22, 1985 and letters testamentary were issued to him in Vermont on August 19, 1985.

Martel seemed to be in no particular hurry to assert his rights. It was not until April 18, 1988 that he brought identical suits against Stafford in a Vermont state court and in Vermont's federal district court. In due course, each court dismissed Martel's complaint as time-barred on the ground that the applicable statute of limitations pretermitted the action. See Vt.Stat.Ann. tit. 12, § 557(a) (1973) (providing that actions against an executor for acts of the decedent are barred if not commenced within two years of the issuance of letters testamentary).

Undeterred, appellant went in search of a longer statute of limitations. ¹ On November 22, 1988, he filed a diversity action in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Over two years later, Stafford moved for summary judgment on a bouillabaisse of grounds, including statute of limitations, res judicata, absence of personal jurisdiction, and forum non conveniens. The district court granted the motion on the basis of res judicata, but offered no elaboration. This appeal ensued. ²

II. ANALYSIS

While the district court invoked the doctrine of res judicata, we are free to affirm the judgment below on any independently sufficient ground made manifest by the record. ³ See Garside v. Osco Drug, Inc., 895 F.2d 46, 49 (1st Cir.1990); Polyplastics, Inc. v. Transconex, Inc., 827 F.2d 859, 860-61 (1st Cir.1987); Chongris v. Board of Appeals, 811 F.2d 36, 37 n. 1 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 483 U.S. 1021, 107 S.Ct. 3266, 97 L.Ed.2d 765 (1987). When, as now, a potential jurisdictional defect rears its ugly head, an appellate court should not hesitate to scrutinize that defect before proceeding further. See Feinstein v. Resolution Trust Corp., 942 F.2d 34, 40 (1st Cir.1991) (stating that "courts should ordinarily satisfy jurisdictional concerns before addressing the merits of a civil action"). Because jurisdiction is the most natural and obvious starting point here, and because the district court's rationale strikes us as problematic--the general rule is that a dismissal on limitations grounds does not bar the claim generally, but only bars a second action in the same jurisdiction or in a jurisdiction that would apply the same statute of limitations, see, e.g., 18 Charles A. Wright et al., Federal Practice & Procedure § 4441, at 366 (1981)--we tackle the jurisdictional issue first.

A. Personal Jurisdiction over an Executor.

Plaintiff sued only one defendant--Stafford--and sued him solely in his capacity as executor of Parker's estate. ⁴ With exceptions not pertinent here, the Civil Rules provide that the law of the forum state determines a representative party's capacity to sue or be sued in a federal district court. See Fed.R.Civ.P. 17(b); see also 6A Charles A. Wright et al., Federal Practice & Procedure § 1565, at 473 (2d ed.1990). Thus, Massachusetts law governs the determination of whether the district court could lawfully exercise personal jurisdiction over Stafford qua executor.

The traditional Massachusetts rule has been that an executor or administrator appointed in another state--we shall use the generic term "foreign executor"--is not subject to suit in Massachusetts unless a statute dictates to the contrary. See, e.g., Saporita v. Litner, 371 Mass. 607, 614, 358 N.E.2d 809 (1976); Old Colony Trust Co. v. Clarke, 291 Mass. 17, 23, 195 N.E. 758 (1935); Brown v. Boston & Me. R.R., 283 Mass. 192, 195, 186 N.E. 59 (1933); Borden v. Borden, 5 Mass. 67, 76-77 (1809); see also Gallup v. Gallup, 52 Mass. 445, 447 (1846) (holding that a foreign executor cannot sue in Massachusetts); Langdon v. Potter, 11 Mass. 313, 313-14 (1814) (same). The rule stems from the concept that a decedent's personal representative is a creature of the state which appointed him or her, and, as such, possesses no power to act beyond the creator's boundaries. See Saporita, 371 Mass. at 615; Brown, 283 Mass. at 195; see also Derrick v. New England Greyhound Lines, Inc., 148 F.Supp. 496, 497 (D.Mass.1957) (dismissing action against foreign executor on the ground that "even if he were present and served he represents the estate only to the extent of his Connecticut appointment, i.e., not at all, as [the appointment] has no extraterritorial effect").

The traditional rule--like most traditional rules--is not without exceptions. See Saporita, 371 Mass. at 615 (noting that "the rule has not been rigidly applied" and surveying certain common law exceptions). Saporita illustrates the point. There, a Massachusetts resident sued a foreign executor to recover payment for services rendered to the testator. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (SJC) approved a state court's exercise of personal jurisdiction over the executor, primarily because the testator had a wealth of contacts with Massachusetts. See id. at 618. Although Saporita and this case share a certain factual resemblance--in both instances, a foreign state appointed the executor according to the terms of the decedent's will, the foreign executor resided in Massachusetts and was thus subject to in-hand service of process there, and the decedent owned no real estate in Massachusetts--the two cases are more noteworthy for their dissimilarity than for their similitude.

In Saporita, the plaintiff lived and worked in Massachusetts. See id. at 612-13. The contract upon which she sued had been made and performed there. See id. Moreover, the testator's links with Massachusetts were pervasive; he resided and practiced medicine there, considered Boston to be his home, and spent approximately seventy-five percent of each week in the Commonwealth. See id. at 611-12. In the last analysis, it was the testator's contacts with Massachusetts that prompted the SJC to relax the traditional rule and find personal jurisdiction over the foreign executor. The court reasoned that, given contacts "sufficient ... to allow the court to exercise personal jurisdiction over [the testator]," substituting an executor who, although appointed in a foreign jurisdiction, had himself lived and worked in Massachusetts and who had been served in hand there, would "not alter the court's jurisdiction." Id. at 618.

The case before us is at a considerable remove. Despite ample time for pretrial discovery, the record discloses no relationship between the decedent and the forum state. ⁵ From aught that appears, Parker had not a single tie to Massachusetts. And, moreover, the cause of action arose out of state. Had Parker survived and Martel attempted to sue in the Commonwealth, there is not the slightest reason to believe that a Massachusetts court could have obtained jurisdiction over her person. Here, then, unlike in Saporita, allowing the suit to go forward based on the foreign executor's presence in Massachusetts would significantly alter the jurisdictional calculus.

We have said enough. Because the Saporita exception confers personal jurisdiction over a foreign executor only when the testator manifests sufficient contacts with Massachusetts to support the exercise of jurisdiction, not merely when the foreign executor is within the physical reach of a process server, Parker's behavioral patterns assume decretory significance. Because she forged no links of any kind with Massachusetts in her lifetime, her executor's Massachusetts residency cannot tilt the jurisdictional balance. And putting Stafford's residency aside, appellant has identified no other state-law basis for grounding personal jurisdiction. For our part, we can envision none. ⁶ Therefore, we must apply the traditional rule. Under it, Stafford, like the stereotypical foreign executor, is a nonentity, ergo, not amenable to suit beyond the boundaries of the state(s) of his appointment. Giving force to the Massachusetts cases and the policies behind them, we conclude that the district court lacked personal jurisdiction over Stafford qua foreign executor.

We add a small eschatocol. Absent some persuasive indication that a Massachusetts court would abandon its longstanding rule to find jurisdiction...