BRUCE, ADMINISTRATOR OF TOBIN ET AL.,
v.
TOBIN

U.S. | 1917-10-22
No. 645
245 U.S. 18 Supreme Court of the United States (1917) Negative Treatment
Also reported at: 62 L. Ed. 123 · 38 S. Ct. 7 · 1917 U.S. LEXIS 1822 · SCDB 1917-048
Cited by 63 cases

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Synopsis

A railroad worker died in the course of interstate commerce, and the railroad admitted liability and paid damages to the worker's estate administrator. The worker's father subsequently sued in state court to recover his statutory share of the damages, and the South Dakota Supreme Court remanded the case for a new trial without entering a final judgment on the amount owed. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the petition for certiorari, holding that review under the Employers' Liability Act of 1916 requires a final judgment on the face of the record, and a remand for a new trial does not satisfy that finality requirement regardless of whether the court's decision determined the father's ultimate right to recover.

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Opinion of the Court
Mr. Chief Justice White,

Memorandum opinion by

Mr. Chief Justice White,

by direction of the court.

A railroad in whose service Tobin lost his life while actually engaged in carrying on interstate commerce, admitting liability under the Act of Congress, paid the1 conceded loss to Iris administrator. A father and mother, but no widow or children survived. The father, the respond-' ent, sued in a state court to recover half the amount as his share of the loss. Setting aside the action of the trial court rejecting the claim, but not specifically fixing the amount of the father’s recovery, the Supreme Court of South Dakota directed a hew trial to accomplish that result. Application for certiorari was then made by the petitioner on the ground that such decision involved questions under the Employers’ Liability Act reviewable by certiorari under the Act of Congress of September 6, 1916, c, 448, 39 Stat. 726.

The act in question, although it deprived of the right of review by writ of error which had hitherto obtained in certain cases and substituted as to such cases the right of petitioning for review by certiorari, subjected this last right to the same limitation as to the finality of the judgment of the state court sought to be reviewed which had prevailed from the beginning under- § 709, Rev. Stats., § 237, Judicial Code. Finality, therefore, continues to be an essential for the purposes of the remedy by certiorari conferred by the Act of 1916.

It may be indeed said that although the case was remanded by the court below for a new trial, the action of the court was in a sense final because it determined the ultimate right of the father to recover and the general principles by which that right was to be measured. But that, contention is not open as it was settled under § 709, Rev. Stats., § 237, Judicial Code, that the finality contemplated was to be determined by the face of the record and the formal character of the judgment rendered, — a principle which excluded all conception of finality for the purpose of review in a judgment like that below rendered. Haseltine v. Bank, 183 U. S. 130; Schlosser v. Hemphill, 198 U. S. 173; Louisiana Navigation Co. v. Oyster Commission of Louisiana, 226 U. S. 99; Coe v. Armour Fertilizer Works, 237 U. S. 413, 418, 419. The reenactment of the requirement of finality in the Act of 1916 was in the nature of things an adoption of the construction on the subject which had prevailed for so long a time.

There being then no final judgment within the contemplation of the Act of 1916, the petition for a writ of certiorari is

Denied.

Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus

Citator

Cited By (29 total)

  • Waddell v. McAllister, 97 Fla. 1054 (Fla. 1929)
    …final adjudication of the cause; and ordinarily a judgment of reversal for á new trial is not in terms or effect a final judgment. Haseltine v. Central Bank, 183 U. S. 130, 22 Sup. Ct. R. 49, 46 L. Ed. 117 and authorities cited. See Bruce v. Tobin, 245 U. S. 18, 38 Sup. Ct. R. 7, 62 L. Ed. 123; Chicago and N. W. Ry. Co. v. Junod, 146 U. S. 354, 13 Sup. Ct. R. 281, 36 L. Ed. 1002; Hamilton v. Wolf, 240 U. S. 251, 258. In A. C. L. R. R. Co. v. Florida Fine Fruit Co., 93 Fla. 161, 112 So. R. 66, and Southe…
    1 / 2
  • Gulf Ref. Co. of La. v. United States, 269 U.S. 125 (U.S. 1925)
  • Republic Natural Gas Co. v. Oklahoma, 334 U.S. 62 (U.S. 1948)
    …not been met merely because the major issues in a case have been decided and only a few loose ends remain to be tied up — for example, where liability has been determined and all that needs to be adjudicated is the amount of damages. Bruce v. Tobin, 245 U. S. 18; Martinez v. International Banking Corp., 220 U. S. 214, 223; Mississippi Central R. Co. v. Smith, 295 U. S. 718. On the other hand, if nothing more than a ministerial act remains to be done, such as the entry of a judgment upon a mandate, the decre…

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