Toledo, St. Louis and Western Railroad Company v. Slavin

Citations

• 236 U.S. 454
• 35 S. Ct. 306
• 59 L. Ed. 671
• 1915 U.S. LEXIS 1775

Syllabus

<p>Where the ruling of the trial court in an action for personal injuries against a railroad company, that the state statute abolishing assumption of risk and contributory negligence applied, was reversed by the intermediate appellate court on the ground that the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, which does not abolish such defenses, applied, and the'highest court of the State reversed this judgment without ■ opinion, a controlling Federal question was necessarily involved and this court has jurisdiction to review under § 237, Judicial Code.</p> <p>When the evidence shows that although the case was brought under the state statute plaintiff was injured while engaged in interstate commerce, the objection that he cannót recover under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act is not a technical rule of pleading, but a matter of substance, and where there are substantive differences between the state -and Federal statutes in regard to defences of assumption of risk and contributory negligence, proceeding under the former is reversible error.</p>