Wells v. Simonds Abrasive Co

• Citation: 345 U.S. 514,73 S.Ct. 856,97 L.Ed. 1211
• Decision Date: 18 May 1953
• Docket Number: No. 394,394
• Parties: WELLS v. SIMONDS ABRASIVE CO
• Court: United States Supreme Court

345 U.S. 514

73 S.Ct. 856

97 L.Ed. 1211

WELLS

v SIMONDS ABRASIVE CO.

No. 394.

Argued Jan. 7, 1953.

Decided May 18, 1953.

Mr. Charles J. Biddle, Philadelphia, Pa., for petitioner.

Mr. Philip Price, Philadelphia, Pa., for respondent.

Mr. Chief Justice VINSON delivered the opinion of the Court.

Cheek Wells was killed in Alabama when a grinding wheel with which he was working burst. The wheel had been manufactured by the respondent, a corporation with its principal place of business in Pennsylvania. The administratrix of the estate of Cheek Wells brought an action for damages in the federal court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania after one year, but within two years, after the death. Jurisdiction was based upon diversity of citizenship.

The section of the Alabama Code¹ upon which petitioner predicated her action for wrongful death provided that action '* * * must be brought within two years from and after the death * * *.' The respondent moved for summary judgment on the ground the Pennsylvania wrongful death statute required suit to be commenced within one year.² In an opinion³ on that motion, the district judge found that the Pennsylvania statute, which was analogous to the Alabama statute, had a one-year limitation. He further found that the Pennsylvania conflict of laws rule called for the application of its own limitation rather than that of the place of the accident. Deeming himself bound by the Pennsylvania conflicts rule, he ordered summary judgment for the respondent. The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit affirmed.⁴

We granted certiorari⁵ limited to the question whether this Pennsylvania conflicts rule violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause⁶ of the Federal Constitution.

The states are free to adopt such rules of conflict of laws as they choose, Kryger v. Wilson, 1916, 242 U.S. 171, 37 S.Ct. 34, 61 L.Ed. 229, subject to the Full Faith and Credit Clause and other constitutional restrictions. The Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel a state to adopt any particular set of rules of conflict of laws; it merely sets certain minimum requirements which each state must observe when asked to apply the law of a sister state.

Long ago, we held that applying the statute of limitations of the forum to a foreign substantive right did not deny full faith and credit, McElmoyle v. Cohen, 1839, 13 Pet. 312, 10 L.Ed. 177; Townsend v. Jemison, 1850, 9 How. 407, 13 L.Ed. 194; Bacon v. Howard, 1857, 20 How. 22, 15 L.Ed. 811. Recently we referred to '* * * the well established principle of conflict of laws that 'If action is barred by the statute of limitations of the forum, no action can be maintained though action is not barred in the state where the cause of action arose.' Restatement, Conflict of Laws, s 603 (1934).' Order of United Commercial Travelers v. Wolfe, 1947, 331 U.S. 586, 607, 67 S.Ct. 1355, 1365, 91 L.Ed. 1687.⁷

The rule that the limitations of the for um apply (which this Court has said meets the requirements of full faith and credit) is the usual conflicts rule of the states.⁸ However, there have been divergent views when a foreign statutory right unknown to the common law has a period of limitation included in the section creating the right. The Alabama statute here involved creates such a right and contains a built-in limitation. The view is held in some jurisdictions that such a limitation is so intimately connected with the right that it must be enforced in the forum state along with the substantive right. ⁹

We are not concerned with the reasons which have led some states for their own purposes to adopt the foreign limitation, instead of their own, in such a situation. The question here is whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause compels them to do so. Our prevailing rule is that the Full Faith and Credit Clause does not compel the forum state to use the period of limitation of a foreign state. We see no reason in the present situation to graft an exception onto it. Differences based upon whether the foreign right was known to the common law or upon the arrangement of the code of the foreign state are too unsubstantial to form the basis for constitutional distinctions under the Full Faith and Credit Clause.

We agree with the respondent that Engel v. Davenport, 1926, 271 U.S. 33, 46 S.Ct. 410, 70 L.Ed. 813, has no application here. It presented an entirely different problem. Congress had given a statutory cause of action to seamen for certain personal injuries, placing concurrent jurisdiction in the state and federal courts . In Engel, supra, the two-year federal limitation rather than the one-year California limitation for similar actions was held controlling in an action brought in the California courts. Once it was decided that the intention of Congress was that the two-year limitation was meant to apply in both federal and state courts under our Federal Constitution, that was the supreme law of the land.¹⁰

Our decisions in Hughes v. Fetter, 1951, 341 U.S. 609, 71 S.Ct. 980, 95 L.Ed. 1212, and First National Bank v. United Air Lines, 1952, 342 U.S. 396, 72 S.Ct. 421, 96 L.Ed. 441, do not call for a change in the well-established rule that the forum state is permitted to apply its own period of limitation. The crucial factor in those two cases was that the forum laid an uneven hand on causes of action arising within and without the forum state. Causes of action arising in sister states were dis- criminated against. Here Pennsylvania applies her one-year limitation to all wrongful death actions wherever they may arise. The judgment is affirmed.

Affirmed.

Mr. Justice CLARK, not having heard oral argument, took no part in the consideration or decision of this case.

Mr. Justice JACKSON, with whom Mr. Justice BLACK and Mr. Justice MINTON join, dissenting.

We are unable to accept the results or follow the reasoning of the Court. Petitioner's decedent, a resident of Alabama, was killed in that State by a bursting emery wheel alleged to have been defective. It was manufactured by respondent, a Pennsylvania corporation. Finding it impossible to serve process on the defendant in Alabama, petitioner brought an action in the United States Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Her action was based on a statute of Alabama which conferred a right of action for wrongfully causing death and required that the action be brought within two years from the death. This she did, but her complaint was dismissed on the ground that, since the federal court was sitting in Pennsylvania, it was bound by the Pennsylvania statute of limitations of one year and, hence, that her action was barred. I believe the United States District Court, though sitting in Pennsylvania, should apply the law of Alabama, both as to liability and as to limitation.

The respondent relies upon the line of cases that began with Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64, 58 S.Ct. 817, 82 L.Ed. 1188. A careful reading of the Erie decision will show that, so far as it applies at all, it is authority for the plaintiff's and not the defendant's position. The Erie injury occurred in Pennsylvania, but the action was brought in a United States District Court in New York. Although the trial court sat in New York, this Court held that it must decide liability by Pennsylvania law, that is, by the law of the state of injury, not that of the forum state, which holding, if applied here, would require that this case be adjudged by the law of Alabama even though it is brought in a federal court sitting in another state. That opinion, by Mr. Justice Brandeis, will be searched in vain for any hint that this result depended on the New York law of conflicts, which is not even paid the respect of mention. Erie R. Co. v. Tompkins held that there is no federal common law of torts and that federal courts must not improvise one of their own but must follow that state's law which is applicable to the case.

That the applicable state law was that of Pennsylvania, instead of that of the forum, was assumed without discussion of the reason because it was pursuant to what is probably the best-settled rule of conflicts in tort cases. It was stated by Mr. Justice Holmes, as follows: '* * * (I)t is established as the law of this court that when a person recovers in one jurisdiction for a tort committed in another he does so on the ground of an obligation incurred at the place of the tort that accompanies the person of the defendant elsewhere, and that is not only the ground but the measure of the maximum recovery.' Western Union Telegraph Co. v. Brown, 234 U.S. 542, 547, 34 S.Ct. 955, 956, 58 L.Ed. 1457. See also Slater v. Mexican National R. Co., 194 U.S. 120, 126, 24 S.Ct. 581, 582, 48 L.Ed. 900; Cardozo, J. in Loucks v. Standard Oil Co., 224 N.Y. 99, 120 N.E. 198. The existence and justice of this principle is recognized by its adoption as the policy of federal law. The Federal Tort Claims Act makes the basic test of the Government's liability whether a private person 'would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.' 60 Stat. 812, 843, 28 U.S.C.A. § 1346(b).

Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Mfg. Co., 313 U.S. 487, 61 S.Ct. 1020, 85 L.Ed. 1477, also cited by respondent, contains language that would seem to make all conflict questions depend on the law of the forum. But that was an action on contract in which conflict considerations prevail that are not present in tort cases. It is but dictum so far as it touches this statutory tort case.

Most of these decisions are actuated by a laudable but undiscriminating yen for uniformity within the forum state. Thus, 'Otherwise the accident of diversity of citizenship would constantly disturb equal administration of justice in coordinate state and federal courts sitting side by side.' Klaxon Co. v. Stentor Electric Mfg. Co., supra, 313 U.S. at page 496, 61 S.Ct. at page 1021, citing the Erie case; and the Court's opinion here refers to it as a...