McCarthy v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad

18 Kan. 46
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedJanuary 15, 1877
StatusPublished
Cited by69 cases

This text of 18 Kan. 46 (McCarthy v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
McCarthy v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railroad, 18 Kan. 46 (kan 1877).

Opinion

[47]*47The opinion of the court was delivered by

Hokton, C. J.:

Demurrer to petition. The action was brought by the plaintiff as administrator of the estate of Michael McCarthy, deceased. The petition alleges that the plaintiff is the duly-appointed and qualified administrator of said estate; that the defendant is and was a railroad corporation, organized and existing under and by virtue of the laws of Illinois, and was and is engaged in operating the Chicago & Southwestern Railroad, a road leading from the city of Leavenworth, Kansas, across the Missouri river bridge, thence east through Platte county, Missouri; that the intestate, on June 5th 1873, while in the employ of defendant as a track-repairer on its road, received personal injuries, in the county of Platte, and state of Missouri, through its gross and culpable negligence, of which injuries he died twenty-four hours thereafter; that the intestate at the time of his employment by said defendant, and at the time of his death, was a resident of this state; that the services were to be performed on the road defendant was operating and controlling; that immediately after the injuries complained of were received, the intestate was brought from Platte county, Missouri, to his home in Leavenworth city, in this state, where he died; that the intestate left Margaret McCarthy as his widow, and eight children, (giving the name of each,) and also states that by-reason of the premises the plaintiff claims damages in the sum of $10,000. The defendant demurred, and assigned the following grounds of objection: first, that the court did not have jurisdiction of the subject-matter of the action; second, that the plaintiff did not have legal capacity to sue; third, that the petition did not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action in favor of the plaintiff against the defendant. The district court sustained the demurrer; and the plaintiff electing to stand by his petition, final judgment was rendered in favor of defendant. To reverse such judgment, a petition in error has been filed in this court.

[48]*481- seor.422ofcole construed. [47]*47The suit is based on section 422 of the civil code, Gen. [48]*48Stat. 1868, pp. 708, 709; and the first question presented is, whether this provision of our statute has any extra-territorial operation. In other words, does this' statute apply, where the suit is brought in this state for r J 7 0 , , an injury done in another state? This question has been before the courts of various states, upon petitions like the one filed in this case, and almost invariably the courts have held that the statutes of a state have no force beyond the limits of the state of their adoption. Generally, all laws are coextensive, and only coextensive with the political jurisdiction of the law-making power. This identical subject is fully discussed, and decided against the claim of the plaintiff in error, in the following cases: Campbell v. Rogers, 2 Handy, 110; Vanderwerken v.N. Y. & N.H. Rld. Co., 6 Abb. Pr. 239; Beach v. Bay State Steamboat Company, 30 Barb. 433; Whitford v. Panama R. R. Co., 23 N. Y. 465; Nashville & Chattanooga Rld. Co. v. Eakin, Adm’r, 6 Cold. (Tenn.) 582; Needham v. Grand Trunk Rly. Co., 38 Vt. 294; Selma, Rome & Bolton Rld. Co. v. Lacy, 43 Ga. 461; Hover v. Pennsylvania Company, &c., 25 Ohio St. 667.

2 mere death In Another state. In the states where the above-cited decisions were rendered, statutes similar to the provisions of section 422 are in force. At common law, this action could not be maintained. In the first place, if the death was caused by a felony, any action for a civil remedy for it would be merged in the criminal proseGU4i°n> or rather, suspended till the conclusion of the criminal action; and as the punishment for a feiony^ causing death, was the death of the offender, and the forfeiture of his property, the suspension of the action really resulted in its defeat. Higgins v. Butcher, Yelv. 89; Marsh v. Stone, 6 B. & C. 551, 557, 564. In the second place, the rule that a personal action dies with the person, which was always regarded as applicable to personal torts, operated to abate any cause of action that might have otherwise belonged to the injured party; and this applied equally to deaths by felony, negligence, or misadventure. No claim then can be maintained, in favor of the action brought, upon [49]*49any rule of the common law; and it is not necessary, in reaching this conclusion, to hold that the doctrine expressed in Baker v. Bolton, 1 Campb. 493, that “in a civil court, the death of a human being cannot be complained of as an injury,” has authoritative force in this country in those states where there is no statute to recover damages sustained by a husband, parent, master, etc., through the death of a deceased, when the party suing was entitled to the services of such person.

It is contended by the counsel for the plaintiff, however, that confessing the full force of the limitations upon the operation of the laws of the state, so far as any extra-territorial power is concerned, and assuming that, by the common law the cause, of action which accrued to plaintiff’s intestate died with him, yet, the action is maintainable, and the demurrer should have been overruled, as the court will presume, in the absence of allegations in the record to the contrary, that the laws of Missouri in respect to actions of this character are like our own. Admitting the premises, the conclusion does not necessarily follow. Every statute of another state, giving a right of action, cannot be enforced in a spirit of comity in this state, even if such statute is set forth in the petition filed in the court; and a very different principle is involved, between presuming the laws of sister states like our own, to sustain *title to property within this state in litigation, and holding that the laws of other states are similar to ours in enforcing through our courts either the penal or remedial statutes of such other state. In Massachusetts,where the rule of the common law is in force, it has been decided in a case where the intestate was an ‘inhabitant of the state, but injured in New York, (which state has a statute similar to our own,) and the statute law of New York was set forth in the declaration, that the action could not be maintained. Hoar, J., in discussing the right of action, and the New York statute, says: “How can it be regarded as anything else than a statute penalty, which the personal representative of the deceased is to recover by an action which is limited in amount, although that amount may be much less [50]*50than the extent of the injury sustained by those whose loss is to be estimated in computing it, and which is to be distributed among the parties entitled to receive it, not in proportion to the injuries which they have respectively sustained, but in proportion to the shares to which they would be severally entitled in the distribution of an intestate estate? We do not readily find a satisfactory answer to this question.” Richardson v. N. Y. Central Rld. Co., 98 Mass. 85. In Ohio, it has been decided, that where a person, who was a brakeman on the M. S. & N. I. Rld.

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Bluebook (online)
18 Kan. 46, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/mccarthy-v-chicago-rock-island-pacific-railroad-kan-1877.