In the absence of action by Congress, a state may by statute
determine and either augment or lessen a carrier's liability, and
such a statute limiting the right of recovery of certain classes of
persons does not deprive a person injured thereafter of a vested
right of property.
Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Hughes,
191 U. S. 477.
Although a citizen of the United States has a right to travel
from one state to another, in the absence of Congressional action,
he does not possess as an incident of such travel the right to
exert in a state in which he may be injured a right of recovery not
given by the laws thereof, although that right may be given by the
laws of other states, including the one in which suit is brought. A
classification with a railroad company's employees of all persons,
including railway postal clerks, not passengers, but so employed in
and about the railroad as to be subject to greater peril than
passengers, is not so arbitrary as to deprive the railway postal
clerk of the equal protection of the laws within the meaning of the
Fourteenth Amendment.
The Pennsylvania statute of April 4, 1868, P.L. 58, providing
that any person, not a passenger, employed in and about a railroad
but not an employee, shall in case of injury or loss of life have
only the same right of recovery as though he were an employee is
not void either because contrary to the power delegated to Congress
to establish post offices and post roads, or because repugnant to
the commerce clause of the Constitution, or in conflict with the
due process or equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment, or because it abridges the privileges and immunities of
citizens of the United States.
Whether a railway postal clerk is a passenger or whether his
right of recovery is limited by such statute is not a federal
question.
72 Ohio St. 659 affirmed.
Reuben L. Martin brought this action to recover compensation for
personal injuries. At the time Martin was injured, he was on a
train of the railroad company, in the employ of the United States
as a railway postal clerk on a route extending from Cleveland,
Ohio, to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. The
Page 203 U. S. 285
injuries arose from the derailing in Pennsylvania of the train
by the negligence of the crew of a work train in permitting a
switch leading to a side track to be open. Among other defenses,
the company pleaded a law of Pennsylvania passed April 4, 1868
(P.L. 58), which, it alleged, was applicable, and relieved from
responsibility. In reply, the plaintiff denied the existence and
applicability of the statute, moreover, and defended on the ground
that the statute, if existing and applicable, was void, first
because contrary to the power delegated to Congress to establish
post offices and post roads; second, because repugnant to the
commerce clause of the Constitution; and third because in conflict
with the equal protection and due process clauses of the Fourteenth
Amendment, and also the clause prohibiting a state from making or
enforcing any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities
of citizens of the United States.
On trial before a jury, the court held the statute in question
to be applicable and valid, and hence operative to defeat a
recovery. A verdict and judgment in favor of the railroad company
was severally affirmed by the circuit court and by the Supreme
Court of the State of Ohio.
Page 203 U. S. 291
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, after making the foregoing statement,
delivered the opinion of the Court.
We quote the Pennsylvania statute of April 4, 1868, upon which
the case turns:
Page 203 U. S. 292
"Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
Pennsylvania, in General Assembly met, and it is hereby enacted by
the authority of the same that, when any person shall sustain
personal injury or loss of life while lawfully engaged or employed
on or about the roads, works, depots, and premises of a railroad
company, or in or about any train or car therein or thereon, of
which company such person is not an employee, the right of action
and recovery in all such cases against the company shall be such
only as would exist if such person were an employee, provided that
this section shall not apply to passengers."
As the application of the statute, if valid, presents no federal
question, we are unconcerned with that matter, although it may be
observed in passing that it is conceded in the argument at bar
that, under the settled construction given to the statute by the
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, the plaintiff, as a railway postal
clerk, was not a passenger, and had no greater rights in the event
of being injured in the course of his employment than would have
had an employee of the railroad company.
Was the application of the statute thus construed to a railway
postal clerk of the United States in conflict with the power of
Congress to establish post offices and post roads?
In
Price v. Pennsylvania Railroad Co. 113
U. S. 221, this question was in effect foreclosed
against the plaintiff in error. That case was brought to this Court
from a judgment of the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 96 Pa. 258,
holding that a railway postal clerk was not a passenger within the
meaning of the Pennsylvania act, and hence had no right to recover
for injuries suffered by him in consequence of the negligence of an
employee of the company. The federal ground there relied upon was
substantially the one here asserted -- that is, the power of the
government of the United States to establish post offices and post
roads, and the effect of the legislation of Congress and the act of
the Postmaster General in appointing mail clerks thereunder. After
fully considering the subject, the case
Page 203 U. S. 293
was dismissed because no substantial federal ground was
involved, the Court saying (113 U.S.
113 U. S.
221):
"The person thus to be carried with the mail matter, without
extra charge, is no more a passenger because he is in charge of the
mail, nor because no other compensation is made for his
transportation, than if he had no such charge; nor does the fact
that he is in the employment of the United States and that
defendant is bound by contract with the government to carry him
affect the question. It would be just the same if the company had
contracted with any other person who had charge of freight on the
train to carry him without additional compensation. The statutes of
the United States which authorize this employment and direct this
service do not therefore make the person so engaged a passenger, or
deprive him of that character, in construing the Pennsylvania
statute. Nor does it give to persons so employed any
right, as against the railroad company, which would not
belong to any other person in a similar employment, by others than
the United States."
This brings us to the second contention -- the the repugnancy of
the Pennsylvania statute to the commerce clause of the
Constitution. It is apparent from the decision in the
Price case, just previously referred to, that, in deciding
that question, we must determine the application of the statute to
the plaintiff in error wholly irrespective of the fact that, at the
time he was injured, he was a railway postal clerk. In other words,
the validity or invalidity of the statute is to be adjudged
precisely as if the plaintiff was, at the time of the injury,
serving for hire in the employment of a private individual or
corporation.
Under the circumstances we have stated, the case of
Pennsylvania Railroad Co. v. Hughes, 191 U.
S. 477, clearly establishes the unsoundness of the
contention that the Pennsylvania statute in question was void
because in conflict with the commerce clause. In that case, a horse
was shipped from a point in the State of New York to a point in the
State of Pennsylvania under a bill of lading which limited the
right of
Page 203 U. S. 294
recovery to not exceeding $100 for any injury which might be
occasioned to the animal during the transit. The horse was hurt
within the State of Pennsylvania through the negligence of a
connecting carrier. In the courts of Pennsylvania, applying the
Pennsylvania doctrine which denies the right of a common carrier to
limit its liability for injuries resulting from negligence, a
recovery was had in the sum of $10,000, the value of the animal. On
writ of error from this Court, the judgment of the Supreme Court of
Pennsylvania was affirmed, it being held that, at least in the
absence of legislation by Congress on the subject, the effect of
the commerce clause of the Constitution was not to deprive the
State of Pennsylvania of authority to legislate as to those within
its jurisdiction concerning the liability of common carriers,
although such legislation might to some extent indirectly affect
interstate commerce. The ruling in the
Hughes case in
effect but reiterated the principle adopted and applied in
Chicago, Milwaukee &c. Ry. Co. v. Solan, 169 U.
S. 133, where an Iowa statute forbidding a common
carrier from contracting to exempt itself from liability was
sustained as to a person who was injured during an interstate
transportation.
The contention that because, in the cases referred to, the
operation of the state laws which were sustained was to augment the
liability of a carrier, therefore the rulings are inapposite here,
where the consequence of the application of the state statute may
be to lessen the carrier's liability, rests upon a distinction
without a difference. The result of the previous rulings was to
recognize, in the absence of action by Congress, the power of the
states to legislate, and of course this power involved the
authority to regulate as the state might deem best for the public
good without reference to whether the effect of the legislation
might be to limit or broaden the responsibility of the carrier. In
other words, the assertion of federal right is disposed of when we
determine the question of power, and doing so does not involve
considering the wisdom
Page 203 U. S. 295
with which the lawful power may have been, under stated
conditions, exerted.
And the views previously stated are adequate to dispose of the
assertion that the Pennsylvania statute is void for repugnancy to
the Fourteenth Amendment. If it be conceded, as contended, that the
plaintiff in error could have recovered but for the statute, it
does not follow that the Legislature of Pennsylvania, in preventing
a recovery, took away a vested right or a right of property. As the
accident from which the cause of action is asserted to have arisen
occurred long after the passage of the statute, it is difficult to
grasp the contention that the statute deprived the plaintiff in
error of the rights just stated. Such a contention, in reason, must
rest upon the proposition that the State of Pennsylvania was
without power to legislate on the subject -- a proposition which we
have adversely disposed of. This must be, since it would clearly
follow, if the argument relied upon were maintained, that the state
would be without power on the subject. For it cannot be said that
the state had authority in the premises if that authority did not
even extend to prescribing a rule which would be applicable to
conditions wholly arising in the future.
The contention that, because plaintiff in error, as a citizen of
the United States, had a constitutional right to travel from one
state to another, he was entitled, as the result of an accident
happening in Pennsylvania, to a cause of action not allowed by the
laws of that state, is in a different form to reiterate that the
Pennsylvania statute was repugnant to the commerce clause of the
Constitution of the United States. Conceding, if the accident had
happened in Ohio, there would have been a right to recover, that
fact did not deprive the State of Pennsylvania of its authority to
legislate so as to affect persons and things within its borders.
The commerce clause not being controlling in the absence of
legislation by Congress, it follows of necessity that the plaintiff
in error, as an incident of his right to travel from state to
state, did not possess the privilege, as to an accident happening
in Pennsylvania, to exert a cause
Page 203 U. S. 296
of action not given by the laws of that state, and had no
immunity exempting him from the control of the state
legislation.
The proposition that the statute denied to the plaintiff in
error the equal protection of the laws because it "capriciously,
arbitrarily, and unnaturally," by the classification made, deprived
railway mail clerks of the rights of passengers, which they might
have enjoyed if the statute had not been enacted, is without merit.
The classification made by the statute does not alone embrace
railway mail clerks, but places in a class by themselves such
clerks and others whose employment in and about a railroad subjects
them to greater peril than passengers in the strictest sense. This
general difference renders it impossible in reason to say, within
the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment, that the legislature of
Pennsylvania, in classifying passengers in the strict sense in one
class and those who are subject to greater risks, including railway
mail clerks, in another, acted so arbitrarily as to violate the
equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Judgment affirmed.
