Oh
Henry Tompkins was walking along a
railroad right-of-way at the same time a
train owned by new york-based
Erie Railroad company was passing
alongside him an unknown object jutting
out from the side of the train hit
Tompkins severing his right arm the law
of Pennsylvania where the accident
happened
considered Tompkins a trespasser on
railroad property because of this the
railroads only duty to Tompkins under
Pennsylvania law was to avoid wanton
negligence under such a harsh rule
Tompkins would have had a hard time
winning his case in a Pennsylvania Court
federal court was a different story
the rules of decision act or RDA for
short required federal courts to apply
the laws of the several states when
deciding cases unless federal law
controlled
put another way federal court sitting in
diversity were bound to apply state law
for a long time there was disagreement
about what the terms state law included
the Supreme Court in Swift versus Tyson
interpreted the RDA to mean that federal
courts had to apply state statutory or
customary law but not state common law
if there was no state statute applicable
to a diversity case federal courts were
permitted to exercise their independent
judgment and apply the general law which
referred to jurisprudence of a general
nature in matters like commercial law or
contracts that were not dependent on
local rules therefore Tompkins ins
lawyers made a strategic decision to
file the lawsuit against Erie in a
federal district court under its
diversity jurisdiction because Swift was
the prevailing rule at the time the
federal court could apply the general
law meaning the majority rule or the
federal courts interpretation of what
the common law was or ought to be a
majority of states at the time held that
a railroad owed a duty of ordinary care
to people walking along the right of way
like Tompkins remember that if Tompkins
had sued in state court Pennsylvania law
would have applied and the railroads
duty to Tompkins would have been only to
avoid wanton negligence we
is a fairly low threshold in other words
in state court Tompkins was pretty much
guaranteed to lose but in federal court
the district judge was free to use his
independent judgment to determine what
the governing rule should be the
district court opted to apply the
majority rule that is that Erie owed
Tompkins the much higher duty of
ordinary care and unsurprisingly
Tompkins won the court awarded Tompkins
thirty thousand dollars and the Court of
Appeals affirmed the supreme court
granted certiorari Justice Brandeis
writing for the majority overturned
Swift versus Tyson Brandeis held that
the Swift Court had misconstrued the RDA
which was intended to ensure that
federal court sitting in diversity
applied state law whether statutory or
common law since Swift federal courts
were declaring rules of general law that
Congress would have had no authority to
enact under its constitutionally
enumerated powers meanwhile state
differences in common law remained the
result was form shopping and blatant
discrimination between citizens and
non-citizens of a state a citizen was
bound by state law but a non citizen
could choose to file her lawsuit against
that citizen in either state or federal
courts and in so doing choose to apply
whichever law was more favorable to her
case on top of that citizens with the
means to move or corporations willing to
incorporate in a different state could
do so in order to take advantage of
federal law the result was a denial of
equal protection of the laws between
citizens and non-citizens a majority of
the court held that federal courts must
apply state law in all diversity cases
regardless of whether it is statutory or
common law unless federal law controls
neither Congress nor federal courts have
the constitutional authority to declare
state common law
the judgment of the Court of Appeals was
reversed and the case was remanded for a
determination of the proper standard
under Pennsylvania state law two
justices wrote separately justice read
wrote a partial concurrence to say that
the decision in Swift versus Tyson was
merely erroneous rather than
unconstitutional justice Butler
dissented to say that the court need not
have considered the constitutional
question at all because under the common
law of Pennsylvania and elsewhere
Tompkins was contributorily negligent
and should have lost the case on that
ground Butler went further though
arguing that the Swift doctrine had
stood almost without question for more
than 50 years and should not have been
overturned without even the benefit of
argument on the constitutional issues
what's more by statute Congress had
granted the federal government the right
to intervene anytime a federal statutes
constitutionality was questioned and
Butler argued that Wright had been
denied because the federal government
hadn't been given the opportunity to
intervene Erie Railroad Company versus
Tompkins is one of the most important
and for law students anyway most reviled
cases in all of Civil Procedure Erie and
its progeny spawned the Erie doctrine
under which federal court sitting in
diversity must apply state substantive
law and may only apply federal
procedural law
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