Missouri Pacific Railway Co. v. Castle

Citations

• 224 U.S. 541
• 32 S. Ct. 606
• 56 L. Ed. 875
• 1912 U.S. LEXIS 2322

Syllabus

<p>This court has repeatedly held that a State may impose upon a railway company liability to an employé engaged in train service for an injury inflicted through the negligence of another employé in the same service.</p> <p>A State also has power to modify or abolish the common-law rule of contributory negligence, and provide by statute that damages to an employé of a railroad company shall only be diminished by reason of his contributory negligence in proportion to the amount of negligence attributable to him.</p> <p>Prior to the enactment by Congress of the Employers’ Liability Act, the States were not debarred from legislating for the protection of railway employés engaged in interstate commerce.</p> <p>The fact that a state statute imposing liability on railway companies for injuries to employés covers acts of negligence in respect to subjects-dealt with by the Federal Safety Appliance Act does not amount to an interference with interstate commerce.</p> <p>The railway liability act of Nebraska of 1907 is not unconstitutional as depriving a railway company of its property without due process of law, or denying it equal protection of the law, or as interfering with interstate commerce.</p> <p>A corporation of one State, which only becomes a corporation of another by compulsion of the latter so as to do business therein, is not a corporation thereof, but remains, so far as jurisdiction of Federal courts' is concerned, a citizen of the State in which it was originally incorporated. Southern Railway Co. v. Allison, 190 U. S. 326.</p>