Where the highest court of the state dismisses the writ of error
to the trial court solely and expressly because of lack of
jurisdiction, the result of the ruling is to determine that the
trial court is the final court where the question could be decided,
and the writ of error from this Court should be directed to the
trial court, and not to the highest court, although that court may
be clothed with jurisdiction of questions of state and federal
constitutionality of state laws, and may have discussed, and found
without merit, the constitutional question.
104 Va. 240, writ of error dismissed.
The facts are stated in the opinion.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE delivered the opinion of the Court.
By statutes of the State of Virginia, a liability to forfeit the
sum of $100 was imposed upon a telegraph company for an omission to
promptly transmit and deliver telegrams received by it. Va.Code
1887, secs. 1291,
Page 203 U. S. 506
1292. On November 2, 1903, Hughes, the defendant in error,
handed to the Western Union Telegraph Company at its office in
Danville, Virginia, a message to be transmitted by wire to
Pocahontas, Virginia, and there delivered to the addressee. In
regular course, such message would have gone by way of Bluefield,
West Virginia. It reached that point, but was not sent further. For
failure to make delivery, Hughes sued the telegraph company in the
Corporation Court of the City of Danville to recover the statutory
penalty, and obtained a judgment. Error was prosecuted to the
Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia upon the contention that the
transmission of the message in question was interstate commerce,
and not subject to the statutory regulations of Virginia heretofore
referred to. The appellate court, however, held (104 Va. 240) that
the case was ruled by a prior decision,
Western Union Telegraph
Co. v. Reynolds, 100 Va. 459, and that such decision had not
been overruled by the decision of this Court in
Hanley v.
Kansas City So. R. Co., 187 U. S. 617,
and, being of opinion, as recited on its journal, "that the writ of
error was improvidently awarded," and that it had "no jurisdiction
to entertain the same," dismissed the writ of error.
Treating the order of dismissal as a final judgment, we are now
asked on this writ of error to reverse the ruling of the Supreme
Court of Appeals of Virginia. This, however, we cannot do. It is
immaterial that the Supreme Court of Appeals was vested by the
state constitution with appellate jurisdiction in all cases
involving the constitutionality of a law as being repugnant to the
Constitution of Virginia or of the United States, or that, in the
opinion delivered by the court, it discussed the federal question
and declared it to be without merit. The fact is undoubted that the
writ of error was dismissed solely and expressly because of a want
of jurisdiction, and the effect of the formal entry adjudging that
the court was without jurisdiction to pass upon the questions
presented by the writ of error cannot be different from what it
would have been had the court not given expression to its views
Page 203 U. S. 507
in a written opinion. The necessary result of the ruling that
the court had not jurisdiction of the writ of error was to
determine that the trial court was the final court where the
questions presented by the writ could be decided, and hence the
writ of error should have been directed to that court.
Missouri, K. & T. Ry. Co. v. Elliott, 184 U.
S. 530,
184 U. S.
539.
Writ of error dismissed.