430

DOUGLAS, J., dissenting.

decree would be a bar to the present action in Louisiana. But there is nothing in the Texas proceeding or in the Texas award to indicate that that was either intended or done. The most charitable construction is that Texas undertook to adjust the rights and duties of the parties and to regulate their relationship only so long as they remained subject to the jurisdiction of Texas.

Under the circumstances disclosed the situation is thus quite different from the usual transitory action or from a decree which undertakes to sever marital bonds between one domiciled in a state and a non-resident. But even if the Texas award were less clear than I think it is, I would resolve all doubts against an inference that rights under the Louisiana contract were adjudicated in Texas. Such a course seems to me essential so that the greatest possible accommodations of the interests of the two States, consistent with the requirements of full faith and credit, may be had whether the matter be divorce, workmen's compensation or any other subject on which state policies differ.

On its face Yarborough v. Yarborough, 290 U. S. 202, might seem to look the other way. There a Georgia decree of permanent alimony for a child was held to be entitled to full faith and credit in South Carolina where the child subsequently sought additional allowances. But the Georgia decree was more clearly an adjudication of the aggregate liability of the defendant than was the Texas award in the present case, for it relieved the father on compliance with its provisions of "all payments of alimony." 290 U. S. p. 207. Moreover, the father was not a resident of South Carolina but had long been domiciled in Georgia. The Court specifically reserved the question whether the Georgia decree would be entitled to full faith and credit as a final discharge of the duty to support had the father been domiciled in South Carolina. 290 U. S.

BLACK, J., dissenting.

320 U.S.

p. 213. Here the Texas award is not only a limited one. The employee is domiciled in Louisiana, the employer is authorized to do business in Louisiana. The employment contract is a Louisiana contract. Louisiana has such a considerable interest at stake that I would allow its policy to be obliterated or subordinated only in case what took place in Texas is irreconcilable with what Louisiana now seeks to do. I do not think it is.

It is thus apparent that the decision of Williams v. North Carolina is no shelter in the present controversy. MR. JUSTICE MURPHY joins in this dissent.

MR. JUSTICE BLACK, dissenting:

The respondent Hunt is a resident of Louisiana, employed in that state by the petitioner and sent by the petitioner to do work in Texas. While in Texas he was seriously injured in the course of his employment. Confined to a hospital he was told that he could not recover compensation unless he signed two forms presented to him. As found by the Louisiana trial judge there was printed on each of the forms "in small type" the designation “Industrial Accident Board, Austin, Texas." To get his compensation Hunt signed the forms and the Texas insurer began to pay. Returning to his home in Louisiana Hunt apparently discovered that his interests would be more fully protected under Louisiana law and notified the insurer of an intention to claim under the statute of that state. The insurer immediately stopped payment to him and notified the Texas Board to that effect. Four days later, without any request from Hunt, the Board notified him at his Louisiana home that a hearing would be held in Texas within two and a half weeks "to determine the liability of the insurance company" under Texas law. Hunt did not participate in that proceeding. The Texas Board thereafter made an award to him which, under the

law of Texas, was equivalent to a judgment against the insurer. Before the Texas award became final Hunt, who had declined to accept any money under it, filed suit against his employer in the courts of Louisiana under the Workmen's Compensation Law of Louisiana. He recovered a judgment for a substantially larger sum than had been allowed him under the Texas award, from which the Louisiana court deducted the sum he had already received from the Texas insurer.

The employer has contended here that the Texas award against the insurer was a judgment which under the full faith and credit clause precluded the employee from any further relief in the courts of Louisiana. The Court today agrees with the employer, holding that while in "exceptional cases. . . the judgment of one state may not override the laws and policy of another, this Court is the final arbiter of the extent of the exceptions." The Court declines to recognize an exception in the case now before us, buttressing its conclusion with a contention that the case of Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co. v. Schendel, 270 U. S. 611, requires such a result.

I disagree. As I see it, this case properly involves two separate legal questions: (1) Did Texas intend the award of its Industrial Accident Board against the insurer to bar the right granted the employee by the Louisiana Workmen's Compensation Law to collect from his employer for the same injury the difference between the compensation allowed by Texas and the more generous compensation allowed by Louisiana? (2) Assuming the Texas award was intended to constitute such a bar, does the interest of Louisiana in regulating the employment contracts of its residents nevertheless permit it to grant that larger measure of compensation which as a matter of local policy it believes necessary? The decision of the Court on both of these issues appears to me to be wrong.

320 U.S.

BLACK, J., dissenting.

I.

Where a state court refuses to recognize the judgment of a sister state as a bar to an asserted cause of action, the full faith and credit clause cannot raise a federal question unless the judgment would have been a bar to a similar suit in that sister state. R. S. § 905, U. S. C. Title 28, § 687; Titus v. Wallick, 306 U. S. 282. Even where the judgment would bar the suit in the sister state, "as this Court has often recognized, there are many judgments which need not be given the same force and effect abroad which they have at home, and there are some, though valid in the state where rendered, to which the full faith and credit clause gives no force elsewhere." Dissenting opinion, Yarborough v. Yarborough, 290 U. S. 202, 213, 214, 215. Whether Texas intended that its award should bar the employee here from recovering compensation under the Louisiana law is an issue upon which Texas courts have not spoken. In fact, they absolutely refuse to entertain any suits at all based on the Louisiana Workmen's Compensation Law. Johnson v. Employers Liability Corp., 99 S. W. 2d 979.

The general rule of res judicata announced by Texas courts is that a judgment on the merits constitutes "a finality as to the claim or demand in controversy, concluding parties and those in privity with them. . . as to every matter which was offered and received to sustain or defeat the claim or demand, [and] as to any other admissible matter which might have been offered for that purpose." Rio Bravo Oil Co. v. Hebert, 130 Tex. 1, 8, 9, 106 S. W. 2d 242, 246. The opinion of Section A of the Texas Commission of Appeals in Ocean Accident & Guarantee Corp. v. Pruitt, 58 S. W. 2d 41, 44-45, relied upon by the Court, presents an application of this rule to Texas workmen's compensation awards. There it was held that an employee who had been denied a compensation award by

the Accident Board could not bring a second proceeding before the Board against the same insurer to recover compensation for the same injuries. In the instant case the situation is entirely different. The parties are not the same; the issues are not the same; and the two proceedings are not under the same Act. The proceeding in this case before the Texas Board was against the insurer only and the award entered, by its express terms, was limited to a release of the insurance company from further liability. The liability of the employer under Louisiana law was not in issue before the Board and could not have been put in issue. The employer was not a party to that proceeding; nor was there "privity" between the insurer and the employer since the insurer's liability did not extend to rights which the employee might have against his employer under Louisiana law. Moreover the jurisdiction of the Accident Board is limited to administration of the Texas Workmen's Compensation Act; even if the issues of liability under Louisiana law had been raised they could not have been decided by that Board. The decision of this Court today, therefore, is tantamount to holding that Texas intended to extinguish a claim against the employer in a proceeding in which the employer was not a party and the issue of its liability under Louisiana law was not allowed to be raised. I cannot impute such an intention to Texas.

The statutes of Texas lend support to the view that the Accident Board's award was not intended to bar the employee's rights against his employer arising under the law of Louisiana. Under the Texas statutes an award of the Accident Board neither adds to nor subtracts from an employer's liability to an injured employee. That liability is fixed, not by an award, but by a tripartite contract implied by the Texas statute between the employer, the employee, and the insurer, under which the employee