Cent. R.R. v. Swint

• Decision Date: 30 September 1884
• Citation: 73 Ga. 651
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court
• Parties: Central Railroad et al. vs. Swint, administrator.

73 Ga. 651

Central Railroad et al. vs. Swint, administrator.

Supreme Court of the State of Georgia

SEPTEMBER TERM, 1884.

Actions. Homicide. Jurisdiction. Administrators and Executors. Before Judge Adams. Chatham Superior Court. March Term, 1884.

Reported in the decision.

A. R. Lawton; J. B. Cumming; Chisholm & Erwin, for plaintiffs in error.

Lester & Ravenel; P. H. Brewster, for defendant.

Jackson, Chief Justice.

This declaration is filed by the administrator of Lambert, an employe of the Central Railroad and Banking Companyof Georgia, and the Georgia Railroad and Banking Company, the said Lambert having been killed by the trains of these companies, projected into Alabama, in that state, and being a citizen of the state of Georgia, and leaving a wife and two children in this state. Letters were taken out in this state, and by virtue of them the suit is brought against the aforesaid railroad companies of Georgia, the purchasers and owners of the Alabama connections, where the killing occurred. It is brought by the Georgia administrator against these companies for the use of the wife and two minor children.

To this declaration a demurrer was filed, " that the laws of Georgia do not give to the said plaintiff, nor to those for whose use he sues, any right of action against these defendants for any injury occurring to plaintiff's intestate within the state of Alabama, '' and "that the laws of Georgia do not give any right of action for the death of any person occurring by reason of the negligence, omission, unskilfulness or default of any person or corporation, his or its officers, agents or servants, committed within the state of Alabama."

This demurrer was overruled, and error is assigned upon the judgment overruling it.

1. We think that the principles ruled in the case of The South Carolina Railroad Company vs. Nix, administrator, 68 Ca., 572, control the point made in the case at bar.

There a South Carolina administrator brought suit in Georgia for the homicide" of his intestate in South Carolina. Therefore the tort in South Carolina was in that case ruled to be a proper subject-matter for one clothed with authority to sue in this state, to recover upon in this state. The South Carolina Railroad Company was a Carolina corporation, but located in Georgia by projecting its track over the Savannah river, and liable to suit here, by the terms on which it entered Georgia as a Georgia corporation. Any suit, therefore, which could be brought against a Georgia corporation could be brought againstit, but none, we apprehend, which could not be brought against our own Georgia railway corporations could be brought against it. Then, if it could be sued in Geor gia for a tort committed in South Carolina, it would follow that a Georgia railway corporation, with lines purchased and owned in South Carolina (by leave of that state of course), could also be sued in Georgia for a tort committed on those lines of railway it owned in South Carolina. And if committed in South Carolina, the tort or homicide was proper subject-matter for a suit in Georgia; so if committed in Alabama on lines owned there by the Georgia corporation and worked...