Lee v. Miller County, Ark.

• Decision Date: 26 September 1986
• Docket Number: No. 85-2598,85-2598
• Citation: 800 F.2d 1372
• Parties: Barry LEE and Jim White, Plaintiffs-Appellants, Cross-Appellees, v. MILLER COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Defendant-Appellee, Cross-Appellant.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fifth Circuit

Page 1372

800 F.2d 1372

Barry LEE and Jim White, Plaintiffs-Appellants, Cross-Appellees, v. MILLER COUNTY, ARKANSAS, Defendant-Appellee, Cross-Appellant.

No. 85-2598.

United States Court of Appeals Fifth Circuit.

Sept. 26, 1986.

Nicholas H. Patton, Young, Patton & Folsom, Richard N. Dodson, Texarkana Ark., for plaintiffs-appellants, cross-appellees.

G. William Lavender, Lavender, Rochelle, Barnette, Franks & Arnold, Texarkana, Ark., for Miller County.

Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas.

Before WISDOM, DAVIS, and JONES, Circuit Judges.

WISDOM, Circuit Judge:

This appeal presents the question whether Miller County, Arkansas, sharing the city of Texarkana with Bowie County, Texas, is immune from suit in Texas by Texas citizens alleging injuries as a result of Miller County's negligence. Relying on the Interstate Civil Defense and Disaster Compact enacted by Texas and Arkansas, ¹ the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas found Miller County immune. We affirm the district court's decision, but we do so on the basis of comity. We conclude that the district court abused its discretion when it refused to extend immunity to Miller County as a matter of comity. We do not address the question of Miller County's immunity under the Interstate Civil Defense and Disaster Compact.

I.

This case is a diversity action arising from a helicopter crash in Mount Pleasant, Texas. The plaintiffs are Barry Lee and Jim White, both citizens and residents of Texas. At the time of the crash Jim White was employed as a lieutenant in the Texarkana, Texas, city police department and also served as civil defense director for Bowie County, Texas. Barry Lee was employed at the Red River Army Depot and was a civil defense worker for Bowie County.

The defendant in this action is Miller County, Arkansas. Miller County, Arkansas and Bowie County, Texas are adjoining counties. Texarkana, Arkansas is located in Miller County, and Texarkana, Texas is located in Bowie County. The two communities of Texarkana are in fact two parts of the same community. As a result Miller County, Arkansas and Bowie County, Texas cooperate in providing many public services. One service in which the counties cooperate is civil defense. Each county aids the other by providing personnel and equipment for training exercises and in emergency situations. In fact, the two counties have substantially combined their respective civil defense agencies into a joint agency with offices in Texarkana, Arkansas.

In 1979, Miller County procured a helicopter from the Civil Defense Agency of the Department of the Army which it used for a number of purposes including law enforcement, public relations, and civil defense. On numerous occasions, Miller County provided the helicopter to Bowie County for civil defense purposes at a nominal fee. In February 1982, the helicopter's lower idler pulley bearing failed. The helicopter was taken to an airport in Texarkana, Texas where the idler assembly was replaced.

On the day of the accident, May 1, 1982, Jesse Jordon, the chief pilot for Miller County, flew the helicopter to an air show in Mount Pleasant, Texas. At the air show, Jordan instructed White to take Lee for a ride in the helicopter. White and Lee adduced evidence that the flight was a "joy ride", but according to Miller County the fatal trip was an orientation flight for Lee, a civil defense worker interested in getting his helicopter license. The district court found that the flight was civil defense related. During this flight, the idler assembly failed causing the helicopter to crash. Both White and Lee suffered serious injuries.

White and Lee instituted this action in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in June of 1982. ² Miller County was named as a defendant in early 1984. ³ The case went to trial before a jury in January of 1985. ⁴ The jury found Miller County 100 percent liable and awarded $150,000 and $100,000 in damages to Lee and White respectively.

Miller County moved for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict based upon the following grounds; 1) Arkansas law is applicable to this controversy and Arkansas law provides complete immunity to Miller County; ⁵ 2) Miller County is immune as a matter of comity; 3) Miller County is immune under the Interstate Civil Defense and Disaster Compact enacted by both Texas and Arkansas.

Finding the applicable law to be that of Texas, the district court rejected Miller County's immunity argument based upon Arkansas state law. The district court also refused to extend immunity to Miller County as a matter of comity. The district court, however, accepted Miller County's immunity argument based upon the Interstate Civil Defense and Disaster Compact. Lee and Miller appealed from that part of the district court's opinion granting Miller County immunity under the Compact. Miller County cross-appealed contending that the district court should have selected Arkansas law and that even if Texas law were applicable, the district court should have extended immunity to Miller County as a matter of comity.

We do not find the district court's selection of Texas law erroneous, ⁶ but we do conclude that the court abused its discretion when it refused to grant immunity to Miller County on the basis of comity.

II.

Comity is a principle under which the courts of one state give effect to the laws of another state or extend immunity to a sister sovereign not as a rule of law, but rather out of deference or respect. Courts extend immunity as a matter of comity to foster cooperation, promote harmony, and build goodwill.

The district court found no case in which a Texas court was confronted with a request by another sovereign for immunity as a matter of comity. Our search for such a case has also been fruitless. In deciding how a Texas court would deal with such a request, we therefore look to other Texas decisions involving questions of comity.

A review of the leading opinion of the Texas Supreme Court dealing with comity, McElreath v. McElreath, ⁷ leads to the conclusion that, in the interest of promoting cooperative federalism, a Texas court will recognize the law of another state as a matter of comity as long as the sister state's law does not conflict with the public policy of Texas. McElreath involved the enforcement of an Oklahoma divorce decree, and in that case the Texas Supreme Court applied the law of the sister state notwithstanding that it was at odds with the equivalent provision in Texas law. ⁸ Although the laws of the two states were not in harmony, enforcement of the Oklahoma law did not violate Texas public policy.

The Supreme Court of Texas in Robertson v. Estate of McKnight, ⁹ a case dealing with a related issue, ¹⁰ reaffirmed that Texas courts will enforce another state's law unless it is contrary to Texas public policy. The Robertson court made clear that mere disparity between the law of Texas and that of the other state invoked is not enough to preclude enforcement of the other sovereign's law. Rather, the law of the other state sought to be recognized in Texas must be so antithetical to Texas public policy as to violate "good morals, natural justice, or [be] prejudicial to the general interest of [Texas] citizens." ¹¹

From these cases, we extract the principle that Texas courts will recognize another state's law unless it is repugnant to Texas public policy. Although this does not translate effortlessly into a rule concerning immunity as a matter of comity, we believe the same principles should apply. Unless extending immunity to another state or its subdivision would violate Texas public policy, a Texas court would give effect to the law of that state. ¹² Sitting as a court of the State of Texas under diversity jurisdiction, the district court is bound to this same principle.

III.

With this overview of Texas comity jurisprudence in mind, we turn now to the district court's decision. At the outset, we note that in Texas the decision to extend comity rests in the sound discretion of the trial court. ¹³ Unless the district court abused its discretion in refusing to extend immunity to Miller county, we must therefore allow that refusal to stand. We are not free to substitute our own judgment for that of the district court. Rather we must accord the district court's decision a high presumption of correctness and only overturn that decision if it is based upon clearly erroneous facts or an erroneous conclusion of law. ¹⁴ We are not, however, unmindful of the fact that appellate courts in Texas are not loath to overturn a lower court's failure to accept the law of another sovereign as a matter of comity. ¹⁵ We conclude that in refusing to extend immunity as a matter of comity, the district court relied on improper conclusions of law and failed to consider certain salient facts that counsel in favor of extending immunity.

A. Public Policy of Texas.

In refusing to extend immunity as a matter of comity, the district court was influenced by its determination that under the Texas Tort Claims Act, ¹⁶ a Texas county would not have been immune had it, rather than the Arkansas County, been the defendant in this very same matter. From this determination, the district court concluded that the public policy of Texas was at odds with extending immunity to Miller County and therefore, comity was improper.

With all due respect to the district court, we find this line of reasoning flawed in both its premise and conclusion. First, it is not at all clear that the Texas Tort Claims Act would in any way immunize a Texas county had it been the defendant in this matter. The Texas Tort Claims Act is a limited waiver of sovereign immunity with respect to injuries caused by the State or its subdivisions "arising from the operation or use of a motor-driven vehicle [or] motor-driven equipment". ¹⁷ Although no Texas court has confronted the...