Atchison Ry Co v. Nichols

• Decision Date: 07 April 1924
• Docket Number: No. 268,268
• Citation: 68 L.Ed. 720,264 U.S. 348,44 S.Ct. 353
• Parties: ATCHISON, T. & S. F. RY. CO. v. NICHOLS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

264 U.S. 348

44 S.Ct. 353

68 L.Ed. 720

ATCHISON, T. & S. F. RY. CO.

v NICHOLS.

No. 268.

Argued Feb. 26, 1924.

Decided April 7, 1924.

Messrs. R. O. Brennan and Edgar W. Camp, both of Los Angeles, Cal., and Gardiner Lathrop, of Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

Messrs. M. K. Young and Lyndol L. Young, both of Los Angeles, Cal., for respondent.

Mr. Justice McKENNA delivered the opinion of the Court.

Action for personal injuries received by Nichols' wife while a passenger on a train of petitioner in New Mexico. The injuries resulted in death. The action was brought in one of the superior courts of the state of California, and removed on petition of petitioner to the United States District Court for the Southern District of California, Southern Division.

The amount sued for was $35,586.42, being composed of the elements of $15,000 for the loss of services and advice of the wife, $20,000 for the loss of her society, love, and affection, and $586.42 for various specified services.

Judgment was rendered for petitioner, with costs. It was reversed by the Circuit Court of Appeals, with directions to enter judgment for Nichols in the sum of $5,000.

The question of liability in some court petitioner does not contest. It contests only that the law of New Mexico, upon which liability of petitioner was based, is in conflict with the policy of the state of California, expressed in the laws and decisions of the state. We therefore immediately encounter as an element for consideration the law of New Mexico. It is as follows:

'Whenever any person shall die from any injury resulting from, or occasioned by the negligence, unskillfulness or criminal intent of any officer, agent, servant or employe, whilst running, conducting or managing any locomotive, car, or train of cars, * * * shall forfeit and pay for every person or passenger so dying the sum of five thousand dollars, which may be sued and recovered, first, by the husband. * * *' Code N. M. 1915, § 1820.

The Circuit Court of Appeals sustained the law. Judge Ross, addressing himself to the contention that the law could not be enforced or administered in California, or in a federal court sitting in California, and considering the ground of the contention to be that the law is penal, said:

'But a penal law is one thing, and a statute intended to protect life and to impose a new and extraordinary civil liability upon those causing death, by subjecting then to a private action for the pecuniary damages thereby resulting to the family of the deceased, is quite another. The latter is a question of general law.'

For this were adduced Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U. S. 657, 13 Sup. Ct. 224, 36 L. Ed. 1123; Dennick v. Railroad Co., 103 U. S. 11, 26 L. Ed. 439; Texas & Pacific Railway v. Cox, 145 U. S. 593, 12 Sup. Ct. 905, 36 L. Ed. 829.

The principle announced is contested, and the application of the cases adduced to support it. The attack is naturally directed against Huntington v. Attrill, as it declares itself to be in submission and sequence to the other cases, as well as the expression of independent reasoning and conclusion. The question there, as here, was upon the character of a statute having 'aspects' of penalty. It (the statute) was, however, excluded from the class of criminal laws which had their venue of commission and trial where committed, for it was decided to be, applying and quoting from Dennick v. Railroad Co., supra, 'though a statutory remedy, a civil action to recover damages for a civil injury,' and this because the court decided that, when a statute like the one passed on is involved in consideration, the question whether it is one 'which in some aspects may be called penal, is a penal law in the international sense, so that it cannot be enforced in the courts of another state, depends upon the question whether its purpose is to punish an offense against the public justice of the state, or to afford a private remedy to a person injured...