International Nav. Co. v. Lindstrom
| Decision Date | 23 May 1903 |
| Docket Number | 175. |
| Citation | 123 F. 475 |
| Parties | INTERNATIONAL NAV. CO. v. LINDSTROM. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Second Circuit |
Henry G. Ward, for plaintiff in error.
Franklin Pierce, for defendant in error.
Before WALLACE, LACOMBE, and TOWNSEND, Circuit Judges.
This is a writ of error by the defendant in the court below to review a judgment for the plaintiff entered upon the verdict of a jury. The plaintiff's intestate took passage upon the steamship St. Paul, which left the port of New York bound for Southampton May 16, 1900, and on the 21st day of that month was washed overboard by a high sea and drowned. The St. Paul was owned by the defendant, a corporation of the state of New Jersey, but was registered at the port of New York. The administrator of the deceased brought the action upon the theory that her death was caused by the negligence of the defendant in allowing her to be on the deck of the vessel without protecting the deck with netting, or warning her of the danger. The assignments of error present the question whether the trial judge erred in not directing a verdict for the defendant on the whole case because the plaintiff was not entitled to recover.
Inasmuch as at common law the cause of action for a tortious personal injury does not survive the death of the person injured there can be no recovery in such a case in the absence of statutory liability, and, as statutes have no extraterritorial operation, there can be no recovery unless the statutory liability arose within the territorial sovereignty of the state whose statute authorizes the recovery; but upon considerations of comity such statutes are enforced by the courts of other states, and, when by the statute law of a state a right of action has become fixed, or a legal liability incurred, that liability may be enforced and the right of action pursued, in any court having competent jurisdiction over the subject-matter and the parties. Upon this principle it was held in Dennick v Railroad Co., 103 U.S. 11, 26 L.Ed. 439, that an action could be maintained in a federal court sitting in New York by the administrator of a deceased person who died in New Jersey from injuries received in that state by the negligence of the defendant, because by a statute of New Jersey a recovery was given to the administrator upon such a cause of action.
The territorial sovereignty of a state extends to a vessel of the state when it is upon the high seas, the vessel being deemed a part of the territory of the state to which it belongs; and it follows that a state statute which creates a liability or authorizes a recovery for the consequences of a tortious act operates as efficiently upon a vessel of the state when the vessel is beyond its boundaries as it does when it is physically within the state. The inquiry in the present case therefore, is whether a recovery was authorized by the statute of the state whose territorial sovereignty embraced the steamship. The action was brought upon the theory that the steamship was a vessel of New York, and seems to have been decided at the trial upon that theory. The complaint alleged that the death of the intestate and the negligence occurred upon a vessel of that state, and that the plaintiff was entitled to...
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...their exclusive remedy. 1 See, e.g. Southern Pacific Co. v. De Valle Da Costa, 190 F. 689 (1st Cir.1911); International Navigation Co. v. Lindstrom, 123 F. 475 (2d Cir.1903); The City of Norwalk, 55 F. 98 (S.D.N.Y.1893).2 See the often-quoted passage from Chief Justice Chase's opinion in TH......
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