Osborne v. Grand Trunk Railway Co.

88 A. 512, 87 Vt. 104, 1913 Vt. LEXIS 173
CourtSupreme Court of Vermont
DecidedOctober 13, 1913
StatusPublished
Cited by17 cases

This text of 88 A. 512 (Osborne v. Grand Trunk Railway Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Vermont primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Osborne v. Grand Trunk Railway Co., 88 A. 512, 87 Vt. 104, 1913 Vt. LEXIS 173 (Vt. 1913).

Opinion

Watson, J.

This action is brought upon section 1053 and article 17, section 11, of the Civil Code of the Province of Quebec, to recover for injuries received by the plaintiff when in the employ of the defendant, as conductor on one of defendant’s freight trains, in said Province, by reason of the negligence of the defendant. Section 1053 reads: ‘ ‘ Every person capable of discerning right from wrong is responsible for the damage caused by his fault to another whether by positive act, imprudence, neglect or want of skill.” By article 17, section 11, “the word ‘person’ includes bodies politic and corporate.” The defendant pleaded the general issue, and specially, that the happenings and events as alleged by the several counts in the plaintiff’s declaration took place more than a year prior to the bringing of the plaintiff’s writ, and that by the laws of the Province of Quebec in the Dominion of Canada, wherein said supposed cause of action arose, the plaintiff’s cause of action was thereby extinguished. To this plea no replication was filed; but, no demurrer being interposed, a reply was required, and by Rule 12 of the county court a general denial is to be treated as filed.

At the time of the accident, July 3, 1910, and ever since, the plaintiff was, and has been, a resident of Island Pond, in this State. This suit was not brought until July 8, 1912.

In the course of the trial the defendant offered to show that by certain other articles of the Civil Code, as construed by the courts of the Province of Quebec, the right of action for bodily injuries, given by the sections of the Civil Code on which this suit is brought, becomes extinguished, unless the suit be commenced within one year after the injuries are received, and consequently the plaintiff has no right of action. This offer was excluded and an exception saved.

The law is well settled that where a right of action is given by statute, and’ the statute further provides that suit shall be commenced within a specified time or the right of action shall [107]*107be extinguished, the right of recovery depends upon the action being commenced within the time limited, and if not so commenced, not merely the remedy, but the right and the remedy are extinguished. In Hunt v. Fay, Admr., 7 Vt. 170, this principle was discussed at length and applied. There the defendant’s intestate died in the State of New Hampshire, and the principal administration of his estate was there. By the statute of that State, when an estate was represented insolvent a commission issued, and all claims which might be, but were not exhibited, to the commissioners, were forever barred. The plaintiff, a resident of New Hampshire until after the commissioners made their return, omitted to present any claim against the estate to the commissioners. Afterwards, removing to this State, the plaintiff presented his claim before the commissioners appointed in an ancillary administration here, for allowance against the estate. The administrator pleaded in bar the statute of New Hampshire. The plaintiff contended that the statute affected only the remedy, and for that reason his claim might be enforced in any jurisdiction where a suit could be instituted. It was held, that the case fell within the principle that a discharge of a debt in the country where made, or where it is to be-executed, is a discharge everywhere — that the effect was to discharge the debt, or extinguish the right of the creditor, not a mere suspension or extinction of the remedy; and that it was a bar to the claim when presented before the commissioners in this State, under the ancillary administration. The same distinction is recognized in Cartier v. Page, 8 Vt. 146; Sparhmuk v. Admr. of Buell, 9 Vt. 41, 100; Williams v. Vermont Mutual Fire Ins. Co., 20 Vt. 222; Peck v. Hibbard, 26 Vt. 698, 62 Am. Dec. 605; Needham, Admr. v. Grand Trunk R. Co., 38 Vt. 294.

In Cartier v. Page, the action was assumpsit on a promissory note executed in Canada to a resident there, by a resident of this State. The defendant pleaded in bar that by an act of the Provincial Parliament of the Province of Lower Canada, all notes on which no suit or action should be brought within a specified time after the note becomes due and payable, were taken and considered to be paid and discharged, setting forth the Act. The plaintiff replied, that the defendant, at the time of giving the note and ever thereafter, was and. hath been an inhabitant of this State, and without the jurisdiction of the courts of the Province of Lower Canada. To this a demurrer [108]*108was interposed. The court said the question was, whether the Act of the Provincial Parliament pleaded in bar, was to be considered as governing the nature, validity, and legal effect of the contract declared upon, as a part of the lex loci, or as only a law regulating the remedy to be had, for enforcing the contract; that if the Act belonged to the former class, the contract, if discharged in Canada, was discharged everywhere; but if it belonged to the- latter class, it had no effect here. In Needham v. Grand Trunk R. Co., an action brought by the personal representative of the deceased for the benefit of the widow and next of kin, the deceased, while a citizen of this State and in defendant’s employment as a locomotive engineer, was injured and the cause of action accrued in the State of. New Hampshire. At common law, the cause of action which accrued to the intestate in that state was extinguished by his death, and no right there existed in the personal representatives to recover for such injury. Consequently the action could be maintained, if at all, only upon the ground that the statute of this State has extraterritorial force. It was contended in behalf of the plaintiff, that statutes of survivorship of the right of action pertain simply to the remedy, and therefore that the question of such survivorship was to be determined by the lex fori. It was held that our statute furnishes a remedy where the cause of action accrued without this State, and is not discharged or extinguished, but still exists by the laws of the state where it accrued; but that a cause of action, which by the rules of the common law is extinguished by the death of the party, is by such death fully discharged, unless it survives by force of some statute law of the state.where the cause of action accrued; and that when the cause of action of the intestate does not survive by the laws of the state or territory where it accrued, our statute does not apply. The fact that the intestate was a citizen of this State at the time of his injury, was held to be entirely immaterial in the decision of this question. In Slater v. Mexican National R. Co., 194 U. S. 120, 48 L. ed. 900, 24 Sup. Ct. 581, the action was brought in the United States Circuit Court for the northern district of Texas by citizens and residents of Texas, against a Colorado corporation operating a railroad from Texas to the City of Mexico, to enforce the liability for a death by a wrongful act in Mexico, created by Mexican statutes. The court, speaking through Mr. Justice Holmes, said: “When such a liability is enforced in a [109]*109jurisdiction foreign to the place of the wrongful act, obviously that does not mean that the act in any degree is subject to the lex fori, with regard to either its quality or its consequences.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Anderson v. Evans
83 N.W.2d 59 (Nebraska Supreme Court, 1957)
Dupuis v. Woodward
88 A.2d 177 (Supreme Court of New Hampshire, 1952)
Midstate Horticultural Co. v. Pennsylvania Railroad
320 U.S. 356 (Supreme Court, 1943)
State of Ohio ex rel. Squire v. Porter
129 P.2d 691 (California Supreme Court, 1942)
Great American Indemnity Co. v. Dabney
128 S.W.2d 496 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1939)
Dallas Coffee & Tea Co. v. WilLiams
45 S.W.2d 724 (Court of Appeals of Texas, 1931)
Moore v. Lee Court Realty Company
43 S.W.2d 45 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976), 1931)
Lilly v. O'Brien
6 S.W.2d 715 (Court of Appeals of Kentucky (pre-1976), 1928)
Lough v. State Industrial Accident Commission
207 P. 354 (Oregon Supreme Court, 1922)
Tarbell v. Grand Trunk Railway Co.
111 A. 567 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1920)
In re Chisholm's Will
108 A. 393 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1919)
Carpenter v. Central Vermont Railway Co.
107 A. 569 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1919)
Squires v. O'Connell
99 A. 268 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1916)
State v. Alpert
92 A. 32 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1914)
Smythe v. Central Vermont Railway Co.
90 A. 901 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1914)
Griffin v. Boston & Maine Railroad
89 A. 220 (Supreme Court of Vermont, 1913)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
88 A. 512, 87 Vt. 104, 1913 Vt. LEXIS 173, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/osborne-v-grand-trunk-railway-co-vt-1913.