Martin v. Pittsburg & Lake Erie Railroad

Citations

• 203 U.S. 284
• 27 S. Ct. 100
• 51 L. Ed. 184
• 1906 U.S. LEXIS 1591

Syllabus

<p>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.</p> <p>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 employés oí 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.</p> <p>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 ■ employé, shall in case of injury or loss of life have only the same right of recovery as though he were án employé, 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.</p> <p>Whether a railway postal clerk is a passenger or whether his right of recovery is limited by such’statute is not a Federal question.</p>