Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938), was a landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in which the Court held that the United States does not have a general federal common law and that U.S. federal courts must apply state law, not federal law, to lawsuits between parties from different states that do not involve federal questions.
Tompkins, a citizen of Pennsylvania, was injured on a dark night by a passing freight train of the Erie Railroad Company while walking along its right of way at Hughestown in that State.
Tompkins was walking along the railroad tracks in Pennsylvania when he was hit by an open railcar door. However, in a likely instance of forum shopping, he filed a lawsuit against the railroad company in a federal court in New York, where the corporation was a resident.
Brief Fact Summary. Defendant Harry Tompkins, was injured by a freight car of Plaintiff Erie Railroad while in Hughestown, Pennsylvania. Defendant brought suit in federal district court in New York, asking the judge to apply “general law” regarding negligence, rather than Pennsylvania law, which required a greater degree of negligence.
In July 1934, Pennsylvania resident Harry Tompkins (plaintiff) was walking along the railroad tracks when the open cabin door of a passing train struck him, knocking him to the ground and amputating his right arm. Tompkins sued Erie Railroad Co. (defendant) for negligence.
Tompkins, a citizen of Pennsylvania, was injured on a dark night by a passing freight train of the Erie Railroad Company while walking along its right of way at Hughestown in that state.
Erie reversed course and held that federal courts would have to follow the relevant state-court decisions even if no state statute applied. Erie was decided in an era when state courts were experimenting with their common laws of tort, property, and contract, in a more progressive direction.
While walking along the railroad tracks, Harry Tompkins (plaintiff), a citizen of Pennsylvania, was injured by a train owned by Erie Railroad Co. (Erie) (defendant). Tompkins sued Erie, a New York company, for negligence in New York federal court.
Under the governing state court precedent in Pennsylvania, Tompkins’s personal injury claim against the Erie Railroad was doomed to failure. Case law established that a person walking along the railroad tracks was a trespasser to whom the railroad owed almost no duty of care.
The question for decision is whether the oft-challenged doctrine of Swift v. Tyson shall now be disapproved. Tompkins, a citizen of Pennsylvania, was injured on a dark night by a passing freight train of the Erie Railroad Com-pany while walking along its right of way at Hughestown in that State. He claimed that the accident occurred through