First Nat Bank of Chicago v. United Air Lines

• Citation: 96 L.Ed. 441,72 S.Ct. 421,342 U.S. 396
• Decision Date: 03 March 1952
• Docket Number: No. 349,349
• Parties: FIRST NAT. BANK OF CHICAGO v. UNITED AIR LINES, Inc
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

342 U.S. 396

72 S.Ct. 421

96 L.Ed. 441

FIRST NAT. BANK OF CHICAGO

v UNITED AIR LINES, Inc.

No. 349.

Argued Jan. 8, 1952.

Decided March 3, 1952.

Rehearing Denied April 7, 1952.

See 343 U.S. 921, 72 S.Ct. 675.

Mr. Robert J. Burdett, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

Mr. David Jacker, Chicago, Ill., for respondent.

Mr. Justice BLACK delivered the opinion of the Court.

John Louis Nelson was killed when one of respondent's airliners crashed in Utah. Claiming $200,000 under the Utah wrongful death statute, petitioner brought this action in a United States district court in Illinois. Decedent prior to his death was a resident and citizen of Illinois; petitioner, his executor, is an Illinois bank; and respondent, United Air Lines, Inc., is a Delaware corporation doing business in Illinois. Since the jurisdictional amount and diversity of citizenship requirements have been met, the case is properly triable under 28 U.S.C. § 1332, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332, unless ch. 70, § 2 of the Illinois Revised Statutes bars the action. This Illinois law provides: 'no action shall be brought or prosecuted in this State to recover damages for a death occurring outside of this State where a right of action for such death exists under the laws of the place where such death occurred and service of process in such suit may be had upon the defendant in such place.'

The District Court and Court of Appeals, relying on the doctrine declared in Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188, as discussed and applied in later cases,¹ held that in a diversity case such as this the state statute was binding on the federal as well as state courts in Illinois and constituted a bar to maintenance of this action.² In so doing, they rejected two constitutional contentions made by petitioner: (1) Congress having granted diversity jurisdiction to federal district courts pursuant to power granted by Article III of the Constitution, that jurisdiction cannot be abridged or destroyed by the Illinois statute; (2) the Illinois statute violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the United States Constitution (Art. IV, § 1) in providing that claims for Utah deaths shall not be enforced in Illinois state courts where service on defendants could be had in Utah. We need not discuss this first constitutional contention or the Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins problems presented by it, for we recently held in Hughes v. Fetter, 341 U.S. 609, 71 S.Ct. 980, 95 L.Ed. 1212, that a Wisconsin statute, much like that of Illinois, did violate the Full Faith and Credit Clause. It was to consider this full faith and credit question with reference to the Illinois statute that we granted certiorari. 342 U.S. 875, 72 S.Ct. 168.

The Wisconsin statute invalidated in Hughes v. Fetter, supra, barred suit in the Wisconsin courts for any wrongful death caused outside the state. The Illinois statute before us today is the exact duplicate of the Wisconsin statute with the single exception that suit is permitted in Illinois under another state's wrongful death statute if service of process cannot be had on the defendant in the state where the death was brought about. That Illinois is willing for its courts to try some out-of-state death actions is no reason for its refusal to grant full faith and credit as to others. The reasons supporting our invalidation of Wisconsin's statute apply with equal force to that of Illinois. This is true although Illinois agrees to try cases where service cannot be obtained in another state. While we said in Hughes v. Fetter that it was relevant that Wisconsin might be the only state in which service could be had on one of the defendants, we were careful to point out that this fact was not crucial. Nor is it crucial here that Illinois only excludes cases that can be tried in other states. We hold again that the Full Faith and Credit Clause forbids such exclusion. The District Court should not have dismissed this case.

Reversed.

Mr. Justice JACKSON, whom Mr. Justice MINTON joins, concurring in the result.

I part company with the Court as to the road we will travel to reach a destination where all agree we will stop, at least for the night. But sometimes the path that we are beating out by our travel is more important to the future wayfarer than the place in which we choose to lodge.

There are two possible routes to the agreed destination. One requires that a state statute prescribing jurisdictional limitations on its own courts be declared unconstitutional—a path which a century and a half of precedent constrains us to avoid if another way is available. This, together with adherence to the views expressed in dissent in Hughes v. Fetter, 341 U.S. 609, 71 S.Ct. 980, 95 L.Ed. 1212, persuades me to resolve the issue of jurisdiction of federal courts by reference to the Act of Congress which confers that jurisdiction.

Whether or not Illinois may validly close her own courts to litigation of this kind, Illinois most assuredly cannot prescribe the subject matter jurisdiction of federal courts even when they sit in that State. Congress already has done this, 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332(a)(1), and state law is powerless to enlarge, vary, or limit this requirement. The parties to this case have showed the diversity of citizenship and amount in controversy required by Congress, and therefore the federal court, by virtue of the law of its own being, has jurisdiction of their action.

The suggestion that Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188, and its progeny diminish the jurisdiction of a federal court sitting in a diversity case by assimilating any limitation that the state may impose on her own courts seems to confuse the law of jurisdiction with substantive law. In Erie and the cases which have followed, this Court has gone far in requiring that a federal court exercising diversity jurisdiction apply the same law as would be applied if the action were brought in the state courts. But in so doing the Court has been interpreting the Rules of Decision Act, 28 U.S.C. § 1652, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1652, which reads as follows: 'The laws of the several states, except where the Constitution or treaties of the United States or Acts of Congress otherwise require or provide, shall be regarded as rules of decision in civil actions in the courts of the United States, in cases where they apply.'

It is indeed fanciful to suggest that a state statute relating to the power of its own courts is an applicable 'rule of decision' under this statute, when Congress in passing the federal jurisdictional grant has specifically 'otherwise required and provided.' 28 U.S.C. § 1332(a)(1), 28 U.S.C.A. § 1332(a)(1). The petitioner...