Guinness v. Miller
| Decision Date | 28 June 1923 |
| Citation | 291 F. 769 |
| Parties | GUINNESS et al. v. MILLER, Alien Property Custodian, et al. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of New York |
Van Vorst, Marshal & Smith, of New York City (Alexander B Siegel, of New York City, of counsel), for plaintiffs.
William Hayward, U.S. Atty. (Dean Hill Stanley, of counsel), for defendants.
This is a suit under section 9 of the Trading with the Enemy Act (Comp. St. 1918, Comp. St. Ann. Supp. 1919, Sec. 3115 1/2e) by a citizen to recover a debt owed by a German on a stated account payable in marks. The sole question is whether the decree should be for the value in dollars of the marks when the account was stated, December 31, 1916, or for their value as of the date of the decree.
In the case of tort committed in a foreign jurisdiction it is pretty clear that the judgment should be based on the exchange at the time of the loss inflicted. In such cases we are familiar with the idea that his wrong imposes on the tort-feasor an obligation to indemnify his victim in money. A court of the sovereign where the tort occurs enforces this obligation in the money of that sovereign, regardless of its change in value, merely because those are the terms in which it is cast. When a court takes cognizance of a tort committed elsewhere, it is indeed sometimes said that it enforces the obligation arising under the law where the tort arises. And if this were true, it would seem to follow that the obligation should be discharged in the money of the sovereign in whose territory the tort occurred, and that the proper rule would be to adopt the rate of exchange as of the time of the judgment.
However no court can enforce any law but that of its own sovereign and, when a suitor comes to a jurisdiction foreign to the place of the tort, he can only invoke an obligation recognized by that sovereign. A foreign sovereign under civilized law imposes an obligation of its own as nearly homologous as possible to that arising in the place where the tort occurs. But since, apart from specific performance, such an obligation must be discharged in the money of that sovereign, none other being available, the obligation so created can only be measured in that medium. The form of the obligation must therefore be to indemnify the victim for his loss in terms of the money of the foreign sovereign, and that obligation necessarily speaks as of the time when it arose; that is, when the loss occurred. Hence a foreign court is as little concerned with the changes in the value of money in the territory where the tort arose as are the courts of that territory itself. Each court is enforcing a different obligation, imposed by different sovereigns, necessarily defined in the terms of its own money.
In case of torts this has been generally recognized as the proper result. The Verdi, 268 F. 908; The Celia, (1921) 2 App.Cas 544. The same considerations obviously apply to the breach of a contract resulting in unliquidated damages; at least, if the resulting obligation to indemnify the promisee be regarded as imposed by law, and not as an alternative performance. And even if the second notion be accepted, the alternative performance is not to pay a fixed sum, but generally to indemnify the promisee. Such a...
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Grant v. McAuliffe
...of its own as nearly homologous as possible to that arising in the place where the tort occurs.' Learned Hand, J., in Guinness v. Miller, D.C., 291 F. 769, 770. But the forum does not adopt as its own the procedural law of the place where the tortious acts occur. It must, therefore, be dete......
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...New York law for purposes of adjudicating this case fairly. See Siegmann v. Meyer, 100 F.2d 367 (2d Cir., 1938); Guinness v. Miller, 291 F. 769 (S.D.N.Y.1923) (L. Hand, J.), aff'd, 299 F. 538 (2d Cir., 1924), aff'd sub nom. Hicks v. Guinness, 269 U.S. 71, 46 S.Ct. 46, 70 L.Ed. 168 (1925); C......
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Pearson v. Northeast Airlines, Inc., 297
...imposes an obligation of its own as nearly homologous as possible to that arising in the place where the tort occurs." Guinness v. Miller, 291 F. 769, 770 (S.D.N.Y.1923), aff\'d, 299 F. 538 (2d Cir. 1924), aff\'d sub nom. Hicks v. Guinness, 269 U.S. 71, 46 S.Ct. 46, 70 L.Ed. 168 The sound r......
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Customary international law as U.S. law: a critique of the revisionist and intermediate positions and a defense of the modern position.
...law is applicable is often conceptualized as the first State's incorporation of the other State's law as its own. See Guinness v. Miller, 291 F. 769, 770 (S.D.N.Y. 1923) (Hand, J.), aff'd sub nom. Guiness v. Miller, 299 F. 538 (2d Cir. 1924), aff'd in part, rev'd in part sub nom. Hicks v. G......