Richter v. East St. Louis & S. Ry. Co.

20 F.2d 220, 1927 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1233
CourtDistrict Court, E.D. Missouri
DecidedMay 23, 1927
DocketNo. 7655
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 20 F.2d 220 (Richter v. East St. Louis & S. Ry. Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, E.D. Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Richter v. East St. Louis & S. Ry. Co., 20 F.2d 220, 1927 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1233 (E.D. Mo. 1927).

Opinion

PARIS» District Judge.

Defendant demurs, for that (a) this action cannot be maintained in this court by the administrator under the law of Missouri, as applied to the facts set out in the petition; and (b) because the facts pleaded are not sufficient to constitute any cause of action against defendant.

These facts are few and simple. Plaintiff’s decedent, a resident and citizen of Missouri in her lifetime, was killed in the state of Illinois, as it is said, by the negligence of the defendant’s servants, employees and agents. Plaintiff was duly appointed administrator of her estate in Missouri, and in the city of her domicile and citizenship, and brought this action in the state circuit court of the city of St. Louis, whence it was duly removed to this court on account of diversity of citizenship. Under the Illinois statute an action for the negligent killing of a person by a common carrier can be maintained only by the administrator of him so killed. Under the law of Missouri, ordinarily, a local administrator cannot sue on such a cause of action in a state court of Missouri; certainly, when the cause of action arises in Missouri, and under the laws thereof; but such an action must be brought by certain parties who are named in the Missouri statute. Under certain contingencies, set out in the present statute (section 4217, R. S. Mo. 1919), an administrator may now sue.

The question touching who may bring and maintain an action in the state circuit courts of Missouri is of course a question as to which the construction put by the Missouri Supreme Court on the applicatory statutes of Missouri becomes and is the paramount law. There is a Missouri statute on the subject (section 98, R. S. Mo. 1919), which formerly, at least, denied administrators the right to maintain an action of this sort, subject, now, of course, in a proper case, to any change worked by the 1905 amendment to section 4217, R. S. Mo. 1919. Prom the former Missouri decisions construing section 98, supra, it seems clear that an administrator, appointed by the probate court of a county of Missouri, could not, before the amendment of 1905, have brought or maintained an action in a state court of Missouri for damages for the negligent killing of a person in this state. No one contends to the contrary.

It seems equally clear, under the Missouri ruled cases, that such local administrator could not before such amendment, have sued in such case in a Missouri state court, even though the death of his decedent happened, and thus the cause of action arose, in another state, wherein alone, as here, an administrator must sue. Vawter v. Mo. P. Ry. Co., 84 Mo. [221]*221679, 54 Am. Rep. 105; Oates v. Union Pac. Ry. Co., 104 Mo. 514, 16 S. W. 487, 24 Am. St. Rep. 348; McGinnis v. Mo. Car & Foundry Co., 174 Mo. 225, 73 S. W. 586, 97 Am. St. Rep. 553; Schueren v. St. L., etc., Ry. Co. (Mo. Sup.) 192 S. W. 965. These premises must, I think, be regarded as settled. Therefore, if this cause of action had arisen in Missouriand had remained in the circuit court of the city of St. Louis, plaintiff could not have maintained it, and a demurrer, if there urged in such a case, must have been sustained, under a ground of demurrer provided by the statutes of Missouri.

But it is urged here that, even if plaintiff could not have maintained this action in the state court where he commenced it, ho may upon removal maintain it here nevertheless. No cases are cited, either for or against this proposition, by either side. Remarkable to say, I have not, after considerable research, found a ease squarely in point. Upon principle, it is difficult to see how jurisdiction could exist here, if there were none in the state court, especially in a case wherein the jurisdiction is concurrent, and this court gets jurisdiction on account of diversity of citizenship alone. By analogy, the matter of removal has been likened to a change of venue. Davis v. St. Louis Ry. Co. (C. C.) 25 F. 786. If such analogy exists, and Judge Brewer (afterwards Mr. Justice Brewer) said in the case last cited that it does, this settles the question in favor of the view I express.

Both Illinois and Missouri have substantially enacted into their local laws whát is called “Lord Campbell’s Act.” The statute of Illinois confers the right of action on the personal representative of the deceased for the benefit of his “widow and next of kin.” The statute of Missouri now confers the right of action on four different classes of persons. By the first of these classes, the right of action is given to the surviving husband or wife, if he or she shall sue within six months. Under the second of these classes, the right of action goes to the children, natural or adopted, if there be no surviving spouse, or if the surviving spouse shall fail to sue in six months after the death of deceased. By the third of these classes, if there be no surviving spouse, and no children or their descendants, the father and mother (if deceased be a minor) take the right to sue. By the fourth subdivision (enacted as an amendment, in 1905, to what is now section 4217, R. S. Mo. 1919), if all the persons mentioned in all three of the preceding classes are nonexistent, or fall without the statute, then the action in Missouri may be brought by the personal representative of deceased, for the benefit of all persons entitled thereto by other statutes of Missouri, providing for the distribution of an estate according to the laws of descent. In other words, it may be said that the sum recovered goes under the fourth subdivision to the next of kin, when recovered by the personal representative under the Missouri law.

It is fairly clear that, if the casualty which caused the death of plaintiff’s decedent had happened in Missouri, he could not have sued in his capacity of personal representative, for the reason that such decedent left surviving her a living husband, to whom the right to sue was first given, and because the Missouri statute makes no provision for vesting the right to sue in an administrator, when other persons, to whom prior rights are given, having been in esse when the death occurred, shall subsequently die before bringing suit. Plaintiff cannot maintain Ms action upon any theory referable to any statute of Missouri. If he could have maintained it in a state court, where he began it, he must have done so under the law of Illinois.

It is true that, pursuant to the mandate of the federal Constitution, each state of the Union must open its courts to citizens of a foreign state, but only upon the same terms and conditions as such state opens such courts to its own citizens. But tMs rule has no application here, because plaintiff, as was his decedent in her lifetime, is a citizen of Missouri. But even the rule of comity enjoined by the federal Constitution is not a thoroughgoing one. As intimated above, the requirement goes only so far as to prohibit any distinctions as between local citizens and the citizens of foreign states of the Union. The state of the forum has an option in the matter. This option depends in the last analysis on whether the action sought to be brought in a state court is contrary to a statute, or to the public policy of the state of the forum. If it is, then, since a citizen may not maintain it, the citizen of a foreign state cannot. The constitutional mandate goes so far, and no farther. It simply forbids, as said, arbitrary distinctions to be made as against citizens of another state.

Moreover it was said in the case of Thompson v. Railroad, 6 Wall. 134, 138 (18 L. Ed.

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Bluebook (online)
20 F.2d 220, 1927 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1233, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/richter-v-east-st-louis-s-ry-co-moed-1927.