The Fourteenth Amendment safeguards fundamental rights, and not
the mere form which a state may see proper to designate for their
enforcement and protection, and where such rights are equally
protected and preserved, they cannot be said to be denied because
of the forum in which the state deems it best to provide for a
trial.
The mere direction of a state law that the venue of a cause
under given circumstances shall be transferred does not violate the
equal protection of the laws where the laws are equally
administered in both forums.
Section 5030, Revised Statutes of Ohio, providing for a change
of venue under certain conditions, where a corporation having more
than fifty stockholders is a party, is not repugnant to the
provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment.
The facts are stated in the opinion of the court.
Page 193 U. S. 32
MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
Snell, the defendant in error, sued the railway company, the
plaintiff in error, in the Common Pleas Court of Hamilton
Page 193 U. S. 33
County, Ohio, to recover for alleged personal injuries. Availing
of a section of the Ohio statutes, Snell moved that the cause be
transferred for trial to the court of common pleas of an adjoining
county, and reserved an exception to a denial of such request. The
trial resulted in a verdict in favor of the railway company.
Error was prosecuted by Snell to the Circuit Court of Hamilton
County, and the judgment being affirmed in that court the case was
taken to the Supreme Court of Ohio. The error complained of was the
refusal of the trial court to grant a transfer of the cause. The
railway company insisted in both courts that the transfer had been
rightly refused on technical grounds, and because the state statute
upon which the transfer was asked was repugnant to the Fourteenth
Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. The Supreme
Court of Ohio decided that, under the state statute, the court
should have transferred the cause, and that the statute which
required this transfer was not repugnant to the Fourteenth
Amendment. 60 Ohio St. 256. The case was then brought to this Court
by the railway company, and was dismissed because the judgment of
the supreme court of the state was not final.
Cincinnati Street
Railway Company v. Snell, 179 U. S. 395. The
cause thereupon proceeded in the state court and was transferred
from Hamilton County to the common pleas court of an adjoining
county, where a trial was had which resulted in a verdict and
judgment in favor of Snell. The railway company prosecuted error to
the circuit court of the county, and, failing to secure a reversal
in that tribunal, carried the case to the Supreme Court of Ohio, by
which court the judgment of the trial court was affirmed. In all
the courts the railway company reiterated its contention concerning
the repugnancy to the Constitution of the United States of the
statute providing for the transfer of the cause, and its claims on
this subject were expressly overruled. This writ of error was
thereupon allowed.
Section 5030 of the Revised Statutes of Ohio, upon which the
application for the transfer of the cause was allowed, is as
follows:
Page 193 U. S. 34
"When a corporation having more than fifty stockholders is a
party in an action pending in a county in which the corporation
keeps its principal office, or transacts its principal business, if
the opposite party make affidavit that he cannot, as he believes,
have a fair and impartial trial in that county, and his application
is sustained by the several affidavits of five credible persons
residing in such county, the court shall change the venue to the
adjoining county most convenient for both parties."
The Supreme Court of Ohio, in disposing of the objection that
the statute was repugnant to the equal protection and the due
process clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment, among other things,
said:
"We are unable to adopt that view. It has never been regarded as
essential to the validity of remedial procedure that it should be
applicable in all of its provisions to all persons or parties
alike. Different situations and conditions often render appropriate
and necessary different provisions, the necessity of propriety of
which rests largely in the legislative discretion."
"
* * * *"
"Generally, actions against individuals must be brought in the
county where the defendant resides or may be personally served with
process, and generally, actions against corporations are required
to be brought in the county in which the corporation is situate, or
has its principal office or place of business, or and office or
agent; while insurance companies may be sued in any county where
the cause of action or any part of it arose, a mining corporation
in any county in which it owns or operates a mine, and a railroad
company in any county into which the road runs. Of a like nature
are regulations for changes of venue. They are designed to secure
to parties a fair and impartial trial of their causes, which is the
ultimate and highest purpose of judicial proceedings, and the
extent to which such regulations may go, for the accomplishment of
that purpose, is addressed to a sound legislative discretion, in
view of the nature of the case to be provided for, and the probable
conditions likely to arise."
And in further commenting upon the effect of the remedy
Page 193 U. S. 35
which the statute afforded upon the substantial rights of the
parties, the court observed:
"In neither case, however, is any party deprived of the equal
protection of the law, for each is assured of a fair trial, with
equal opportunities to establish and enforce his rights; nor is the
remedy by due course of law denied, because in the forum to which
the cause is removed, the trial is conducted in the same way, under
the same mode of procedure, as in that from which it was changed,
with all remedial rights of the parties unimpaired. The only
complaint is that the trial will be attended with some
inconvenience and additional expense; but in that respect, both
parties are equally affected, and must necessarily be so in any
change of venue for any cause, and the objection is, we think,
insufficient to annul a statute, otherwise unobjectionable, which,
in the legislative estimation, was demanded in order to secure the
impartial administration of justice."
None of the errors assigned or arguments advanced to sustain
them pretend that any unequal law governed the trial of the cause
in the courts below or that the result of such trial was a denial
of the equal protection of the laws. The sole contention is that
the equal protection of the laws was denied because an equal
opportunity was not afforded to secure a transfer of the cause from
the court in which it was originally brought to the court in which
it was ultimately tried.
Thus, it is argued that the plaintiff Snell under the statute
was given the right to have the cause transferred whilst a like
right was not conferred on the corporation; that the existence of
prejudice justifying the transfer was made by the statute to depend
upon the domicil and number of stockholders in the corporation,
while no equivalent right was given the corporation growing out of
any prejudice which might have existed against the corporation, it
being moreover asserted that the causes stated in the statute as
basis for the transfer furnish no just ground for the
classification made by the statute. The entire ground therefore
relied on to show that the statute is repugnant to the Fourteenth
Amendment rests upon the assumption that such amendment not only
secures that the
Page 193 U. S. 36
rights and obligations of persons shall be measured by equal
laws, but also that the provisions of the Amendment control the
states in the creation of courts and in the provisions made for the
trial of causes in the courts which are created.
This proposition, however, was long since decided to be
untenable.
Missouri v. Lewis, 101 U. S.
22;
Chappell Chemical & Fertilizer Company v.
Sulphur Mines Company, 172 U. S. 474. In
the first of these cases, it was directly held that the Fourteenth
Amendment did not operate to deprive the several states of the
complete power to create such courts as were deemed essential, and
to endow them with such jurisdiction as was considered appropriate.
This being true, it follows, as the lesser is contained in the
greater power, that the state law which authorized under enumerated
circumstances and conditions the transfer of the cause from one
court to another was equally unaffected by the provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment. But conceding,
arguendo, the
contrary, this case is without merit.
As previously shown, the Supreme Court of the State of Ohio
pointed out in its opinion that the rights of the parties were
governed in the court to which the case was transferred by the same
law and the same rules which would have prevailed had the case been
tried in the court in which it was originally brought. And this has
not been challenged either by the assignments of error or any of
the arguments made to sustain them. The proposition to which the
case reduces itself is therefore this: that, although the
protection of equal laws equally administered has been enjoyed,
nevertheless there has been a denial of the equal protection of the
law within the purview of the Fourteenth Amendment only because the
state has allowed one person to seek one forum and has not allowed
another person, asserted to be in the same class, to seek the same
forum, although as to both persons the law has afforded a forum in
which the same and equal laws are applicable and administered. But
it is fundamental rights which the Fourteenth Amendment safeguards,
and not the mere forum which a state may see proper to designate
for the enforcement and protection of such rights. Given,
therefore, a condition
Page 193 U. S. 37
where fundamental rights are equally protected and preserved, it
is impossible to say that the rights which are thus protected and
preserved have been denied because the state has deemed best to
provide for a trial in one forum or another. It is not, under any
view, the mere tribunal into which a person is authorized to
proceed by a state which determines whether the equal protection of
the law has been afforded, but whether, in the tribunals which the
state has provided, equal laws prevail.
It follows that the mere direction of the state law that a
cause, under given circumstances, shall be tried in one forum
instead of another, or may be transferred when brought from one
forum to another, can have no tendency to violate the guaranty of
the equal protection of the laws where, in both the forums,
equality of law governs and equality of administration prevails. In
Iowa Central Railway Company v. Iowa, 160
U. S. 393, this Court said:
"But it is clear that the Fourteenth Amendment in no way
undertakes to control the power of a state to determine by what
process legal rights may be asserted or legal obligations be
enforced, provided the method of procedure adopted for these
purposes gives reasonable notice and affords fair opportunity to be
heard before the issues are decided. This being the case, it was
obviously not a right, privilege, or immunity of a citizen of the
United States to have a controversy in the state court prosecuted
or determined by one form of action instead of by another."
And the same principle was reiterated in
Backus v. Fort
Street Union Depot Company, 169 U. S. 557,
169 U. S. 569,
and in
Wilson v. North Carolina, 169 U.
S. 586. It was further expressed in
Williams v.
Eggleston, 170 U. S. 304, and
in
Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company v. Schmidt,
177 U. S. 230. The
cases decided in this Court which are relied upon at bar to sustain
the contrary contention are not apposite. They are
Gulf,
Colorado & Santa Fe Railroad Company v. Ellis,
165 U. S. 150;
Cotting v. Kansas City Stock Yards Company, 183 U. S.
79, and
Connolly v. Union Sewer Pipe Company,
184 U. S. 540.
Each of these cases involved determining whether
Page 193 U. S. 38
the provisions of particular state laws were so unequal in their
operation upon the rights of parties as to engender the inequality
prohibited by the Fourteenth Amendment. None of the cases,
therefore, lends support to the proposition upon which this case
depends -- that is, that, although there has been no denial of the
equal protection of the laws, nevertheless such denial must be held
to exist only because the state has seen fit to direct under
particular conditions a trial of a cause in one forum instead of in
another, when in both forums equal laws are applicable and an equal
administration of justice obtained.
Affirmed.