Hutto v. Benson
Decision Date | 30 April 1954 |
Docket Number | No. 11873,11874.,11873 |
Citation | 212 F.2d 349 |
Parties | HUTTO v. BENSON et al. NEWARK INS. CO. v. BENSON et al. |
Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit |
Jesse C. Parks, Jr., and Joe Van Derveer, Chattanooga, Tenn., for appellant A. F. Hutto.
Erma Greenwood, Knoxville, Tenn., R. R. Kramer, Knoxville, Tenn., on brief for appellant Newark Ins. Co.
H. H. McCampbell, Jr., Knoxville, Tenn., for appellees.
Before SIMONS, Chief Judge, and AlLEN and MILLER, Circuit Judges.
These two appeals, one instituted by the appellant Hutto, hereinafter called Hutto, in a personal injury action, and the other by the appellant Newark Insurance Company, hereinafter called Newark, insurer under the Workmen's Compensation Act of Texas, Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. art. 8306 et seq., involve the same transactions and were consolidated for argument and decision. Each attacks a judgment of the District Court which dismissed an action against a third party resident in the State of Tennessee upon the ground that the Tennessee statute of limitations had run. This statute provides a limitation of one year for personal injury cases, Code, § 8595, while the Texas period of limitation in such cases is two years, Vernon's Ann.Civ.St. art. 5526.
On August 20, 1952, Hutto filed a complaint against the appellees, residents of the State of Tennessee, in the District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. Hutto alleged that he was a painter by trade and that on or about the 13th day of August, 1951, while he was engaged in the performance of his duties in Wichita Falls, Wichita County, Texas, a scaffold made or manufactured by the appellees and then being used by Hutto, gave way by reason of negligent or defective construction, causing Hutto to fall and suffer serious injuries. Later Hutto prayed for leave to amend his complaint by adding two new paragraphs which read as follows:
Appellant Newark filed a motion to intervene as plaintiff and tendered a complaint which, in addition to the facts set forth in Hutto's complaint, reads as follows:
Newark demanded judgment for the sum of $5,079.65 with interest, together with the reasonable cost of enforcing the liability and the costs of the action. The District Court considered that the action was barred by the statute of limitations of Tennessee and therefore refused to permit Hutto's amended complaint and Newark's intervening complaint to be filed. D.C., 110 F.Supp. 355.
Appellant contends that this holding runs counter to the decisions of this court in Wilson v. Massengill, 6 Cir., 124 F.2d 666, and Maki v. George R. Cooke Co., 6 Cir., 124 F.2d 663, 146 A.L.R. 1352. In these cases our court applied the doctrine that, where by statute a state creates a cause of action for wrongful death and prescribes in the same statute a limitation period for such action, such limitation will be applied in the forum of a sister state, although the period of limitation for a like action in the latter state is shorter. See also Theroux v. Northern Pacific R. Co., 8 Cir., 64 F. 84; Lewis v. Reconstruction Finance Corporation, 85 U.S.App.D.C. 339, 177 F.2d 654.
This contention cannot be sustained, for the premise upon which the cited cases were based is absent here. No limitation period is prescribed in the Workmen's Compensation Act of Texas. The applicable provision is part of the general Texas statute of limitations. Moreover, the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Wells v. Simonds Abrasive Co., 345 U.S. 514, 73 S. Ct. 856, 97 L.Ed. 1211, has recently cast doubt upon the doctrine of Wilson v. Massengill, supra. In that case the alleged wrongful death occurred in Alabama and the action was instituted in Pennsylvania. The statute creating the cause of action for wrongful death in Alabama prescribed a limitation of two years, while the period set in the Pennsylvania general statute of limitations provided one year. Although the Alabama statute construed embodied a limitation provision, the Pennsylvania District Court, 102 F.Supp. 519, and the Court of Appeals, 3 Cir., 195 F.2d 814...
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...as being so specifically directed to the substantive cause of action as to be considered a part of it. However, in Hutto v. Benson, 1954, 212 F.2d 349, 352, 354, even the Sixth Circuit casts doubt on Petitioner's contention that "liability cannot extend beyond the time fixed by New York law......
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