Baltimore Mail S.S. Co. v. Fawcett

• Decision Date: 07 January 1936
• Citation: 269 N.Y. 379,199 N.E. 628
• Parties: BALTIMORE MAIL S. S. CO. v. FAWCETT, Supreme Court Justice, et al.
• Court: New York Court of Appeals Court of Appeals

269 N.Y. 379

199 N.E. 628

BALTIMORE MAIL S. S. CO.

v.FAWCETT, Supreme Court Justice, et al.

Court of Appeals of New York.

Jan. 7, 1936.

Proceeding in the matter of the application of the Baltimore Mail Steamship Company for an order of prohibition against Lewis L. Fawcett, as Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of New York, and another. From an order of the Appellate Division, Second Department, which denied a motion for an order of prohibition directing the respondent to refrain from further proceedings in an action brought by the respondent Michael Madsen against petitioner, in the Supreme Court, Richmond county, the petitioner appeals.

Order reversed, and application granted.

See, also, 244 App.Div. 809, 279 N.Y.S. 766.Appeal from Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Second department.

Raymond Parmer and Vernon S. Jones, both of New York City, for appellant.

Simone N. Gazan, of New York City, for respondents.

LEHMAN, Judge.

Baltimore Mail Steamship Company is a corporation organized under the laws of Maryland. It is engaged solely in interstate and foreign commerce. It operates five steamships for the transportation of passengers, mails, and cargo between the ports of Baltimore, Md., and Norfolk, Va., and between those ports and Havre in France and Hamburg and Bremen in Germany. Michael Madsen was injured while working as a seaman on a steamship operated by Baltimore Mail Steamship Company. At the time of the accident, the steamship was lying at a pier at Norfolk, Va. Madsen thereafter became a resident of the state of New York and began in this state an action against Baltimore Mail Steamship Company to recover damages caused by the injury suffered on its steamship.

Baltimore Mail Steamship Company moved in the Appellate Division for an order of prohibition against any further proceedings in the action. It claimed that prosecution of the action in this state ‘will impose an oppressive and unreasonable burden upon the interstate and foreign commerce in which it is engaged, in contravention of article 1, section 8, of the Constitution of the United States, and that by reason of that fact the courts of the State of New York have not jurisdiction over the subject matter of the action.’ The motion was denied, and Baltimore Mail Steamship Company now appeals to this court as of right, on the ground that the construction of the Constitution of the United States is directly involved in the proceeding.

At the outset the question arises whether we have any jurisdiction to review the order of the Appellate Division, which recites that the ‘motion for an order of prohibition be and the same hereby is denied in the exercise of discretion.’ We may not review the discretion of the Appellate Division where there is room for the exercise of discretion. We have said in People ex rel. Cuvillier v. Hagarty, 238 N.Y. 621, 144 N.E. 917, that ‘the writ of prohibition does not issue as a matter of right but in the sound discretion of the court,’ (citing cases), and that the order of the Appellate Division (209 App.Div. 832, 205 N.Y.S. 195) refusing to grant it is not appealable to this court unless the order or the opinion shows that the application was denied as a matter of law and not in the exercise of discretion. Upon an application for a writ or order of prohibition, ‘the sole question to be tried is the power of the inferior court or magistrate to do the particular act in question. * * * It is justified only by ‘extreme necessity’ when the grievance cannot ‘be redressed by ordinary proceedings at law, or in equity, or by appeal’' (citing cases). People ex rel. Livingston v. Wyatt, 186 N.Y. 383, 393, 394,79 N.E. 330, 334,10 L.R.A. (N.S.) 159,9 Ann.Cas. 972. A decision or order of a court or magistrate acting without jurisdiction is void, and though, until reversed or vacated, it may cause annoyance or even damage, such grievances may, as a general rule, be redressed by the ordinary remedies of appeal, motion to vacate, or habeas corpus proceedings. Such remedies may, it is true, be inconvenient, and, at times, incomplete. The consequences of judicial error are not entirely erased, though the error be subsequently corrected; the consequences of judicial usurpation may be serious and, in part irremediable by subsequent rebuke. The writ of prohibition was devised to halt a threatened judicial usurpation of jurisdiction before it causes damage. ‘It is in effect an injunction against a court’ (People ex rel. Livingston v. Wyatt, supra), and upon an application for an order or writ of prohibition, as upon an application for an injunction, there may be room for the exercise by the court of discretion whether to grant the extraordinary remedy which would prevent a threatened wrong, or to withhold its arm at that time and remit a suitor to the less convenient and less complete remedies provided by the ordinary proceedings at law, or in equity, for redress of such wrong. It is in that sense that ‘it is often said that the granting or refusing of a writ of prohibition is discretionary, and therefore not the subject of a writ of error’ (Smith v. Whitney, 116 U. S. 167, 173, 6 S.Ct. 570, 573, 29 L.Ed. 601), and it is only in that sense that we have referred to orders denying a writ or order of prohibition as discretionary and not the subect of an appeal to this court. What we have said cannot be applied to cases where the question of jurisdiction is not doubtful, and there is no remedy except prohibition available. Then there is no room for the exercise of discretion, and an order granting or denying the remedy of prohibition is reviewable on appeal. Cf. Smith v. Whitney, supra; Farquharson v. Morgan, [1894] 1 Q.B. 552; High on Extraordinary Legal Remedies (3d Ed.) § 773-a.

We need not now attempt a general definition of the limits of judicial discretion. Doubtless the cases are rare where there is no element of discretion. At least in those rare cases where a writ or order of prohibition is the only available remedy against invasion of a right guaranteed by law, a refusal to grant that remedy is in effect a denial of the right. The appellant here contends that, under the Constitution of the United States, the exercise of jurisdiction by the courts of this state in the action brought against it here would violate a right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States. Since the state itself cannot deny rights guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, it is evident that the courts of this state must give protection to such a right. Refusal of the only possible means of protection of a constitutional right cannot, then, be justified upon the ground that it was made in the exercise of discretion. It is not within the power of a state to so regulate the jurisdiction of its courts as to prevent the effective assertion of a constitutional right. Cf. Commonwealth of Kentucky v. Powers, 201 U. S. 1, 26 S.Ct. 387, 50 L.Ed. 633, 5 Ann.Cas. 692. At least where an application for an order of prohibition shows conclusively that only by such order can its clear constitutional rights be protected, the order must issue as of right, and the recital in an order, denying the application, that it is made ‘in the exercise of discretion’ is without effect. For these reasons the order is appealable to this court.

The general jurisdiction of the courts of this state extends to transitory causes of action arising in another jurisdiction, even though the plaintiff may not have been a resident of this state when the cause of action arose and the defendant may be a foreign corporation. Gregonis v. Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co., 235 N.Y. 152, 139 N.E. 223, 32 A.L.R. 1. The general jurisdiction of the courts of a state is confined to the field from which the state itself is not excluded under the provisions of the Constitution. The appellant maintains a bank account in this state for its convenience in conducting its business of transportation by sea in interstate and foreign commerce. Perhaps it solicits traffic or freight here. Otherwise it has no property and engages in no activities here. Its steamships do not enter any port in this state or even pass through the waters along its shores. Though the appellant is incorporated in the state of Maryland and derives its authority to engage in interstate commerce from the laws of that state, it ‘may not be prevented by another State from coming into its limits' (Western Union Tel. Co. v. Kansas ex rel. Coleman, 216 U.S. 1, 27, 30 S.Ct. 190, 197, 54 L.Ed. 355), nor may another state impose unreasonable or oppressive burdens upon its property or activities here.

Litigation against carriers ‘in States and jurisdictions remote from that in which the cause of action arose entails absence of employees from their customary occupations; and that this impairs efficiency in operation, and causes, directly and indirectly, heavy expense to the carriers.’ Davis v. Farmers' Co-operative Equity Co., 262 U.S. 312, 315, 316, 317, 43 S.Ct. 556, 557, 67 L.Ed. 996. True, the court pointed out there that ‘the fact that the business carried on by a corporation is entirely interstate in character does not render the corporation immune from the ordinary process of the courts,’ even where the result may be some obstruction of its business; but such obstruction should not go further than the reasonable requirements of orderly and effective administration of justice, and it was held that ‘orderly, effective administration of justice clearly does not require that a foreign carrier shall submit to a suit in a State in which the cause of action did not arise, in which the transaction giving rise to it was not entered upon, * * * in which the plaintiff does not reside,’ and that the general jurisdiction of a state over transitory causes of action does not include jurisdiction of the subject of such an action brought under those conditions against a foreign corporation, engaged in the business of a...