Smoot v. Fischer
| Decision Date | 15 April 1952 |
| Docket Number | No. 28235,28235 |
| Citation | 248 S.W.2d 38 |
| Parties | SMOOT v. FISCHER et al. |
| Court | Missouri Court of Appeals |
Carter, Bull & McNulty, of St Louis, and Doris J. Banta, of St. Louis, of counsel, for appellant.
Louis J. Portner and Milford T. English, both of St. Louis, for respondent.
This is an action for damages for personal injuries sustained by plaintiff, Ruth Smoot, as a consequence of an automobile collision which occurred on the MacArthur Bridge which spans the Mississippi River between East St. Louis, Illinois, and St. Louis, Missouri.
One of the colliding automobiles was driven by defendant Virgil Fischer, and the other by defendant Charles Aldridge, Jr. Plaintiff was riding as a guest in the automobile driven by defendant Fischer.
Tried to a jury in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, Missouri, a verdict was returned in favor of plaintiff, and against both defendants, in the sum of $3,500. Defendant Fischer filed his motion asking the court to enter judgment in his favor in accordance with his prior motion for a directed verdict, or, in the alternative, to grant him a new trial. The court overruled the motion, whereupon he gave notice of appeal from the final judgment, and by proper successive steps has caused the case to be transferred to this court for our review.
Defendant Aldridge, while present at the trial, was not represented by counsel, and apparently took no steps on his own behalf to secure a review of the adverse judgment.
The accident occurred about four o'clock in the morning on March 13, 1948. Plaintiff, a young woman eighteen years of age, was riding in the front seat of the automobile with defendant Fischer with whom she had been keeping company with some regularity, and another young couple were seated in the rear. The four of them had attended a social function in East St. Louis, Illinois, and were traveling westwardly across the bridge on their way back to their respective homes in St. Louis, Missouri, when Fischer's automobile collided with the automobile being driven eastwardly across the bridge by defendant Aldridge en route from St. Louis, Missouri, to the Scott Field air base in Illinois, where he was stationed as a member of the armed forces.
The chief question in the case is whether Fischer, in making his defense to plaintiff's claim, was entitled to assert and rely upon the Illinois guest statute, Ill.R.S. 1949, Chap. 95 1/2, Sec. 58a, which provides that no person riding in a motor vehicle as a guest, without payment for such ride, shall have a cause of action for damages against the driver or operator of such motor vehicle for injury in case of accident, unless such accident shall have been caused by willful and wanton misconduct of the driver or operator contributing to the injury for which the action is brought.
Plaintiff was concededly a nonpaying guest in Fischer's automobile at the time of the accident, so that if the statute in question applies to the case, she would be precluded from holding Fischer to account in an action based on simple negligence. Whether such statute applies necessarily depends, of course, upon whether her cause of action of governed by the law of Illinois, even though prosecuted in the State of Missouri which has no such guest statute of its own.
The trial court refused to entertain such defense upon the theory that even if it could be shown that the accident occurred at a point east of the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River and therefore within the territorial limits of the State of Illinois, it was nonetheless within the concurrent jurisdiction of the State of Missouri, with the consequence that in the prosecution of an action brought in a Missouri court exercising such concurrent jurisdiction, the case was to be governed exclusively by the law of Missouri, and not by the law of Illinois, including that state's guest statute which Fischer was undertaking to apply.
In situations where a watercourse forms a common boundary between two states, the question of jurisdiction over such watercourse and things transpiring upon it has always been a matter of considerable concern. Generally speaking, the jurisdiction of a state is merely coextensive with its boundaries, so that where a stream forms the boundary between two states, neither would have jurisdiction beyond the center of the stream, or beyond whatever may constitute the actual dividing line, in the absence of some lawful agreement or provision extending each state's jurisdiction over the entire stream. But because of the practical difficulty to be encountered in determining whether a particular thing in controversy occurred on one side or the other of the exact dividing line between the two states, it has been found expedient to extend each state's jurisdiction over the whole of such a stream; and out of all this has evolved the concept of concurrent jurisdiction on the part of adjoining states with respect to a stream or watercourse which forms the common boundary between them.
In the case of our own state, the matter was taken care of by the Congress in Section 2 of the Enabling Act, where it was provided that the eastern boundary of the state should be the middle of the main channel of the Mississippi River, and that the state should have concurrent jurisdiction 'on the river Mississippi' and every other river bordering on the state so far as the said rivers should form a common boundary to the state and any other state or states then or thereafter to be formed. Chap. 22,...
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