Slater v. Mexican National Railroad

194 U.S. 120, 24 S. Ct. 581, 48 L. Ed. 900, 1904 U.S. LEXIS 879

• Court: Supreme Court of the United States
• Decided: April 11, 1904
• Docket: 162
• Status: Published

Opinions

Me. Justice Hoimes

delivered the opinion of the court.

This is an action brought in the United States Circuit Court for the Northern District of Texas by citizens and residents of Texas'against a Colorado.eorporation operating a railroad from Texas to the City of Mexico. The plaintiffs are the widow and children of William H. Slater, who was employed by the defendant as a switchman on its road and was killed through the defendant’s negligence while coupling two freight cars at Nuevo Laredo, in Mexico. This action is to recover damages for the death. The laws of Mexico were set forth in the plaintiffs’ petition, and the defendant demurred on the ground that the cause of action given by the Mexican laws was not transitory, for reasons sufficiently stated. The demurrer was overruled, and the defendant excepted. A similar objection was taken also by plea setting forth additional sections of the Mexican statutes. A demurrer to this plea was sustained, subject to exception. The same point was raised again at the trial by a request to direct a verdict for the defendant. The judge who tried the case instructed the jury that the damages to be recovered, if any, were to be measured by the money value of the life of the deceased to the widow and children, and the jury returned a verdict for a lump sum, apportioned to the several plaintiffs. The judge and jury in this regard acted as prescribed by the Texas Rev. Stat. Art, 3027, The case then was. taken to the Circuit Court of Appeals, where the judgment was reversed and the action ordered to be dismissed. 115 Fed. Rep. 593; 53 C. C. A. 239.

There is no need to encumber the reports with all the statutes in the record. The main reliance of the plaintiffs is upon the following agreed translation from the Penal Code, Book. 2, “Civil Liability in Criminal Matters,” “Art. 301. The civil liability arising from an act or omission contrary, to a penal law consists in the obligation imposed on the party liable, to make (1) restitution, (2) reparation, (3) indemnization, and (4) payment of judicial expenses.”

“Art. 304. Reparation comprehends: Payment of all damages caused to the injured party, his family or a third person for the violation of. a right which is formal, existing and not simply possible, if such damages are actual, and arise directly and immediately from the act or omission complained of, or there be a certainty that such act or omission-must necessarily cause, a proximate and inevitable consequence.” Coupled with these are articles making railroad companies answerable for the negligence. of their servants within the scope of the servants’ employment. Penal Code, ,Bk. 2, Arts. 330, 331; Regulations'for the Construction, Maintenance and Operation of Railroads, Art. 184. We assume for the moment that it was sufficiently alleged and proved that the killing of Slater was a negligent crime within the definition of Article 11 of the Penal Code, and, therefore, if the above sections were the only law bearing on the matter, that they created a civil liability to make reparation to any one whose-rights were infringed.

As Texas has statutes which give an action for wrongfully causing death, of course there is no general" objection of policy .to.enforcing such a liability there, although it aroée in another jurisdiction. Stewart v. Baltimore & Ohio R. R., 168 U. S. 445. But when such a liábility is enforced in a jurisdiction 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. On the other hand, it equally little means that the law of the place of the act is operative outside its own territory. The theory of the foreign suit is that although the act complained of was subject to. no láw having force in the forum, it gave rise to an obligation, an obligatio, which, like other obligations, follows the person, and may be enforced wherever the person may be found. Stout v. Wood, 1 Blackf. (Ind.) 71; Dennick v. Railroad Co., 103 U. S. 11, 18. But as the only source Of this obligation is the law of the place of the act, it follows that that law determines not merely the existence of the obligation, Smith v. Condry, 1 How. 28, but equally determines its extent. It seems to Us unjust to allow a plaintiff to come here absolutely depending on the foreign law for the foundation of his cáse,, and yet to deny the defendant the benefit of whatever limitations on his liability that law Would, impose. In Northern Pacific R. R. v. Babcock, 154 U. S. 190, 199, an action was brought in the District of Minnesota for a death caused in Montana, and it was held that the damages were to be assessed in accordance, with the Montana statute. Therefore we may. lay on one side as quite inadnjissible°the notion that the law of the place of the act may be resorted to. so far as to show that the act was a. tort, and then may be abandoned, leaving the consequences to be determined according to the accident of the place where the defendant may happen to be caught.' See further Pullman Palace Car Co. v. Lawrence, 74 Mississippi, 782, 801, 802, et seq.; Morris v. Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Ry., 65 Iowa, 727, 731; Mexican National Ry. v. Jackson, 89 Texas, 107; Bruce v. Cincinnati R. R., 83 Kentucky, 174, 181; Holmes v. Barclay, 4 La. Ann. 64; Atwood v. Walker, 179 Massachusetts, 514, 519; Minor, Conflict of Laws, 493, § 200. We are aware that expressions of a different tendency may be found in some English cases. But they do not cover the question before this court, and our opinion is based upon the express adjudication of this court and as it seems to us upon the only theory by which actions fairly can be allowed to be maintained for foreign torts. As the cause of- action relied upon is one which is supposed to have arisen in Mexico under Mexican laws, the place of the death and the domicil of the parties have no bearing upon the case.

The application of these considerations now is to be shown. The general ground on which the plaintiffs bring their suit is, as we have stated, that there is a civil liability imposed on the railroad company arising- from an act contrary' to the penal law — -a negligent crime, as it is called in the code. But the code contains specific provisions for the case of homicide. These necessarily override the merely general rule for torts which also are crimes. Mutual Life Ins. Co. of New York v. Hill, 193 U. S. 551. By Art. 311 the right is • personal to the parties mentioned in Art. 318, and is no part of the estate of the deceased. The specific cause of action is the killing of the deceased. So far as appears, apart from that and the following articles, these plaintiffs would have no right of action for the cause alleged. For Art. 304 seems to presuppose a right in the family, not to create one, and we cannot assume' a general right of the members of a family to sue for causing death. By Article 318 civil responsibility for a wrongful homicide includes, besides the expenses of medical attendance and burial and damages to the property of the deceased, the expenses “of the support not only of the widow, descendants arid ascendants of the deceased, who were being supported by him, he being under legal obligations to do so, but also to the posthumous descendants that he may leave.” Then, by Art. 319, the obligation to support shall last during the time that the _ deceased might have lived, calculated by a given life table, but taking the state of his health before the homicide into consideration, but “the obligation shall cease: 1. At whatever tinte it shall riot be absolutely necessary for the subsistence of those entitled to receive it. 2. When those beneficiaries get married. 3. When the minor children become of age. 4. In any other case in which, according to law, the deceased, if alive, would not be required to continue the support.” It is unnecessary to set forth the detailed provisions as to support in other parts of the statutes. It is sufficiently obvious from what has been quoted that the decree contemplated by the Mexican law is a decree analogous to a decree for alimony in divorce proceedings — a decree which contemplates periodical payments and which is subject to modification from, time to time as the circumstances change. See, also, Arts. 1376, 1377, of the Code of Procedure, and Penal Code, Bk, 2, Art. 363.

The present action is a suit at common law and the court has no power to make a decree of this kind contemplated by the Mexican statutes. What the Circuit Court did was to disregard the principles of the Mexican statute altogether and to follow the Texas statute. This clearly was wrong and was excepted to specifically. But we are of opinion further that,, justice to the defendant would not permit the substitution of a lump sum, however estimated, for the periodical payments which the Mexican statute required. The marriage of beneficiaries, the cessation of the absolute necessity for the payments, the arising of other circumstances in which, according to law, the deceased would not have been required to continue the support, all are contingencies the chance of which cannot be estimated by any tabic of probabilities. ’ It would be going far to give a lump sum in place of an annuity for life, the probable value of which could be fixed by averages based on statistics. But to reduce a liability conditioned as this was to a lump sum would be to leave the whole matter to a mere guess. We may add that by Art. 225, concerning alimony, the right cannot be renounced, nor can it be subject to compromise between the parties. There seems to be no possibility in Mexico of capitalizing the liability. Evidently the Texas courts would deem the dissimilarities between the local law and that of Mexico too great to permit an action in the Texas state courts. Mexican National Ry. v. Jackson, 89 Texas, 107; St. Louis, Iron Mountain & Southern Ry. v. McCormick, 73 Texas, 660. The case is not one demanding extreme measures like those where a tort is committed in an uncivilized country. The defendant, always can be found in Mexico, on the other side of the river, and it is to be presumed that the courts there are open to the plaintiffs, if the statute conferred a right upon them notwithstanding their absence from the jurisdiction, as we assume that it' did, for the purposes of this part of the case. See Mulhall v. Fallon, 176 Massachusetts, 266.

So far as appears, the civil liability depends upon penal liability; no different suggestion has been made; and thus far we have taken it for granted that the defendant was within the penal law. The Circuit Court made the same assumption, although the' question was one of fact, in case the jury should find the negligence relied upon to be proved. But whether or not a railroad company was subject to penalty for a-homicide caused by the negligenoe of its servants did not appear. It has occurred to Us, although no such argument was made, that it might be sought to sustain the liability on a different ground. The alleged cause of the accident was the different height of the draw-heads on two cars, which the deceased attempted to couple as they came together. By Art. 52 of the Mexican Railroad Regulations it is fequired that “the cars which enter into the make up of a train shall have draw-heads' of the same height.” By Art. 208 of the same “all violations of this law which companies (railroad) commit shall be subject to punishment by the administration of a fine up to five, hundred dollars, which the department of public works shall assess, reserving always the right of individuals through indemnity and the liabilities which the companies may incur through criminal acts and omissions committed by them.” It might be argued that these sections, coupled with Articles 301 and 304 of the Penal Code, to which we referred in the beginning, were enough to create the liability without regard to the question of homicide. To this it might be enough to answer that it does not appear that a law imposing a fine to be assessed by the department of public works is a penal law within the meaning of the code — that, as we have said in a different connection, when the tort relied on is a homicide the specific provisions for homicide override merely general rules, and that the plaintiffs come here relying, as they have to rely, upon a statute which gives them a right of action independent of the deceased, and that the statute is made expressly and only for the case of homicide. Penal Code, Bk. 2, Art. 311.

But what we last have' said brings into consideration another error of the Circuit Court which hitherto we have not mentioned. . The defendant offered the deposition of a Mexican lawyer as to the Mexican law. This was rejected, subject to exception, seemingly on the ground that the agreed translation of the statute was the best evidence. So no doubt they were,, so far as they went, but the testimony of an expert as to the accepted or proper construction of them is admissiblé upon any matter open to reasonable doubt. Many doubts are left unresolved by the documents before us. The expert would have testified that where ‘no criminal proceedings had been had, the right of the widow and children was dependent upon the court’s finding that the killing was a crime as defined by the penal code, and that the right was in the nature of alimony or pension to be paid in installments for periods of time fixed by the court. Without .stating his testimony more fully, we have said enough to show that it should have been received^ Seem-' ingly he understood that he was testifying in a case against a railroad, and if so he furnished further reasons for denying any liability except on the footing of homicide. In a case of homicide he excluded the argument that there was a right to a lump sum under Arts. 301, 304; distinct from thp right of alimony, and he confirmed the conclusion drawn from the language of the code as to what would be the nature of a Mexican decree in such a case. There may be other matters which would have to be considered before the verdict could be sustained, but what we have said seems to us sufficient to show that the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals should be affirmed.'

Judgment affirmed.