Crider v. Zurich Insurance

380 U.S. 39, 85 S. Ct. 769, 13 L. Ed. 2d 641, 1965 U.S. LEXIS 1731

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: March 1, 1965
• Docket: 116
• Status: Published

Opinions

Mr. Justice Douglas

delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner, a resident of Alabama and employed there by Lawler Construction Co., Inc., a Georgia corporation, was injured. Both he and Lawler were under Georgia’s Workmen’s Compensation Act at the time. Petitioner sued in an Alabama court under the Georgia Act and obtained a judgment by default against Lawler. Respondent, the insurer of Lawler, was sued in the Federal District Court by petitioner on his Alabama judgment, federal jurisdiction being based on diversity of citizenship. The District Court granted respondent’s motion to dismiss (224 F. Supp. 87) and the Court of Appeals affirmed. 324 F. 2d 499. The case is here on a writ of certiorari. 377 U. S. 942.

The District Court and the Court of Appeals stood on Green v. J. A. Jones Construct. Co., 161 F. 2d 369, which held that a Mississippi state court had no jurisdiction to award damages under the Georgia Workmen’s Compensation Act and that the Federal District Court for Mississippi was under the same disability, Georgia decisions settling the point that the remedy provided by the Georgia Act is “an exclusive one which can be afforded only” by the Georgia Compensation Board. Ibid.

We assume that the lower courts were correct in stating what the Georgia law is. But the mere fact that petitioner, if he had sued in Georgia, would have had to follow that course does not necessarily mean that the Alabama state court was in error in taking jurisdiction of the cause.

The Alabama state court dealt with an injury occurring to an Alabama resident while working in Alabama. Under Bradford Electric Co. v. Clapper, 286 U. S. 145, a State could fix one exclusive remedy for personal injuries involving its residents wherever the accident happened and the Full Faith and Credit Clause (Art. IV, § 1) required the other States to refuse to enforce any inconsistent remedy. That case would have been on all fours with the present' one had petitioner been a resident of Georgia, rather than Alabama. Alaska Packers Assn. v. Commission, 294 U. S. 532, and Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Commission, 306 U. S. 493, mark a break with the Clapper philosophy. Alaska Packers allowed the State of residence of the injured employee to supply a remedy different from the Compensation Act of the place of the injury, even though the employee had agreed to be bound by the latter remedy. Pacific Insurance held that a person injured while working in California could recover under California’s Compensation Act even though the injured person was a Massachusetts resident, regularly employed there by a Massachusetts corporation and even though the Massachusetts Compensation Act purported to give an exclusive remedy. In Carroll v. Lanza, 349 U. S. 408, Arkansas, the place where the injury occurred, was allowed to grant common-law damages even though Missouri, the home State, had a Compensation Act that purported to be exclusive. As we stated in that case:

“Missouri can make her Compensation Act exclusive, if she chooses, and enforce it as she pleases within her borders. Once that policy is extended into other States, different considerations come into play. Arkansas can adopt Missouri’s policy if she likes. Or, as the Pacific Employers Insurance Co. case teaches, she may supplement it or displace it with another, insofar as remedies for acts occurring within her boundaries are concerned. Were it otherwise, the State where the injury occurred would be powerless to provide any remedies or safeguards to nonresident employees working within its borders. We do not think the Full Faith and Credit Clause demands that subserviency from the State of the injury.” Id., pp. 413-414.

The State where the employee lives and where he was injured has a large and considerable interest in the event. As we said in Carroll v. Lanza, supra, p. 413, “The State where the tort occurs certainly has a concern in the problems following in the wake of the injury. The problems of medical care and of possible dependents are among these . . . .” The State where the employee lives has perhaps even a larger concern, for it is there that he is expected to return; and it is on his community that the impact of the injury is apt to be most keenly felt. Certainly when the injury occurs in the home State of the employee, the interest of that State is at least commensurate with the interest, of the State in which an injury occurs involving a nonresident, as in Carroll v. Lanza. If Arkansas had a sufficient interest there to override Missouri's exclusive remedy, Alabama may override Georgia’s here.

The Alabama policy in that regard is reflected in the judgment rendered by the Alabama court on which this federal suit was instituted. That Alabama judgment adopted and enforced the remedy provided by Georgia — a procedure we indicated in Pacific Employers Ins. Co. v. Commission, supra, p. 500, a State might follow. Here as in Alaska Packers Assn. v. Commission, supra, p. 544, “. . . the compensation acts of either jurisdiction may, consistently with due process, be applied in either . . . .” We were consistent with that view in Carroll v. Lanza, supra, when we said, in what we have already quoted, that the State of the forum may “supplement” or “displace” the remedy of the other State, consistently with constitutional requirements. 349 U. S., p. 414.

It is earnestly argued by the dissent that the Green decision, supra, which the Court of Appeals followed in the present case, “did not rest on constitutional grounds,” post, p. 46. Rather it is said that Green expresses merely a state conflicts rule.

* We do not so read Green. There the court said that its decision was controlled by the principle that “where the provision for the liability claimed is coupled with a provision for a special remedy to be afforded not by a court but by a commission, that remedy and that alone must be employed . . . .” 161 F. 2d 359. This principle is almost a verbatim restatement of the rule adverted to in Tennessee Coal Co. v. George, 233 U. S. 354, 359: “ ‘where the provision for the liability is coupled with a provision for a special remedy, that remedy, and that alone, must be employed.’ ” And our older cases assumed that this broad rule was compelled by the Full Faith and Credit Clause. See, e. g., ibid., and cases cited; Atchison, T. & S. F. R. Co. v. Sowers, 213 U. S. 55; and also the discussion in Pearson v. Northeast Airlines, Inc., 309 F. 2d 553. But, as we have demonstrated, that rule has been eroded by the line of cases beginning with Alaska Packers and Pacific Insurance. Our holding frees the Court of Appeals on remand to reconsider its holding free from any supposed constitutional compulsion.

Reversed.

We stated in Wells v. Simonds Abrasive Co., 345 U. S. 514, 516:

“The states are free to adopt such rules of conflict of laws as they choose, Kryger v. Wilson, 242 U. S. 171 (1916), 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.”