Gulf, Colorado Santa Fe Railway Company v. Dennis

• Decision Date: 29 April 1912
• Docket Number: No. 203,203
• Citation: 56 L.Ed. 860,32 S.Ct. 542,224 U.S. 503
• Parties: GULF, COLORADO, & SANTA FE RAILWAY COMPANY, Plff. in Err., v. W. R. DENNIS
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

224 U.S. 503

32 S.Ct. 542

56 L.Ed. 860

GULF, COLORADO, & SANTA FE RAILWAY COMPANY, Plff. in Err.,

v W. R. DENNIS.

No. 203.

Submitted March 6, 1912.

Decided April 29, 1912.

Messrs. J. W. Terry, Gardiner Lathrop, A. H. Culwell, A. B. Browne, Alexander Britton, and Evans Browne for plaintiff in error.

No counsel for defendant in error.

Mr. Justice Van Devanter delivered the opinion of the court:

This was an action to recover damages from a railway company for the killing of a cow by one of its trains in Milam county, Texas. The case originated in a justice's court, and was carried by appeal to the county court, where the plaintiff obtained a judgment for $75 as damages and $20 as attorneys' fee. The attorneys' fee was awarded under a statute of the state (Laws of 1909, chap. 47) which the company insisted was repugnant to the due process of law and equal protection clauses of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The insistence was overruled and the company sued out this writ of error, the county court being the highest court in the state to which the case could be carried, considering the amount involved.

Since the case was brought here the statute under which the attorneys' fee was awarded has been adjudged invalid under the state Constitution, by the highest court of the state, because the subject to which it relates is not sufficiently expressed in its title. Ft. Worth & D. C. R. Co. v. Loyd,—Tex. Civ. App. ——, 132 S. W. 899. Thus, the judgment of the county court and the later decision of the highest court of the state are not in accord. The former proceeds upon the theory that the statute is valid under the state Constitution, while the latter conclusively establishes that it is invalid. In these circumstances, what is the duty of this court respecting this matter of local law? Must we proceed upon the same theory as did the county court, or must we give effect to the later decision of the highest court of the state? If we take the latter course, and reverse the judgment for the attorneys' fee, the question of the validity of the statute under the 14th Amendment need not be considered; otherwise, it must be. The intervening decision does not in itself annul the judgment for the fee or prevent its enforcement, and so does not render the Federal question a moot one, unless it operates to place upon us the duty of reversing the judgment without regard to the merits of that question.

The case is still pending. The right to the attorneys' fee is still sub judice. It depends entirely upon the statute, and the highest court of the state has pronounced the statute invalid under the state Constitution. How, then, can we sustain the right or give effect to the statute? Should we not in this situation apply the settled rule, that the decision of the highest court of a state, declaring a statute of the state valid or invalid under the state Constitution, must be accepted by this court? If this were a criminal case wherein the accused had been convicted of a violation of a state statute, alleged to be repugnant to the Constitution of the United States, would we not give effect to an intervening decision of the highest court of the state, declaring the statute invalid under the state Constitution? These questions may not be directly answered by the prior decisions of this court, but their right solution is more than suggested by the well-recognized rule of decision that when, during the pendency in an appellate court of an action for a penalty, civil or criminal, the statute prescribing the penalty is repealed, without any saving clause, the appellate court must dispose of the case under the law in force when its decision is given, even although to do so requires the reversal of a judgment which was right when rendered. United States v. The Peggy, 1 Cranch, 103, 110, 2 L. ed. 49, 51; Yeaton v. United States, 5 Cranch, 281, 3 L. ed. 101; The Rachel v. United States, 6 Cranch, 329, 3 L. ed. 239; Vance v. Rankin, 194 Ill. 625, 88 Am. St. Rep. 173, 62 N. E. 807; Hartung v. People, 22 N. Y. 95; Musgrove v. Vicksburg & N. R. Co. 50 Miss. 677; Montague v. State, 54 Md. 481; Denver & R. G. R. Co. v. Crawford, 11 Colo. 598, 19 Pac. 673; Sheppard v. State, 1 Tex. App. 522, 28 Am. Rep. 422; Kenyon v. State, 31 Tex. Crim. Rep. 13, 23 S. W. 191; Cooley, Const. Lim. 6th ed. 469; 2 Sutherland, Stat. Constr. 2d ed § 286. In the first of the cases cited it was said by Chief Justice Marshall:

'It is in the general true that the province of an appellate court is only to inquire whether a judgment when rendered was erroneous or not. But if, subsequent to the judgment, and before the decision of the appellate court, a law intervenes and positively changes the rule which governs, the law must be obeyed, or its obligation denied. . . . In such a case the court must decide according to existing laws; and if it be necessary to set aside a judgment, rightful when rendered, but which cannot be affirmed but in violation of law, the judgment must be set aside.'

We think what was there said is, in principle, applicable here. For while, on a writ of error to a state court, our province ordinarily is only to inquire whether that court has erred in the decision of some Federal question, it does not follow that where, pending the writ, a statute of the state or a decision of its highest judicial tribunal intervenes and put an end to the right which the judgment sustains, we should ignore the changed situation, and affirm or reverse the judgment with sole regard to the...