Today in Supreme Court History: November 16, 1939

11/16/1939: Justice Pierce Butler dies.

Justice Pierce Butler

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Louisville & Nashville R.R. Co. v. Mottley, 211 U.S. 149 (decided November 16, 1908): defendant’s assertion of defenses based on federal law does not create federal court jurisdiction (I remember this one from law school; a couple guaranteed lifetime passage on a railroad in consideration of settling a personal injury case sued 35 years later when their tickets were no longer being honored)

Hardy v. Harbin, 154 U.S. 598 (decided November 16, 1874): Was John Hardy the same as Thomas (or Tomás) Hardy (an assumed name) to whom the Mexican government had granted land in 1836 as a reward for his war service? At issue was a claim to the land (which by then was in Texas) by John’s grandchildren. The opinion sifts through “3000 folios of testimony” as to sightings of John or Thomas at various times and places, physical descriptions, statements as to owning land, whether a signature was validly recognized, etc. This could be made into a TV series (like “The Fugitive”), or at least a board game. The frontier encounters and the piecing together of a mystery remind me of the Hillmon case. Anyway the Court examines the facts found by the trial court and affirms its finding that it was not the same man.

Bell v. First National Bank of Chicago, 115 U.S. 373 (decided November 16, 1885): by custom and practice three days’ grace is allowed for payment of “foreign bill of exchange” (i.e., can’t sue on it until days of grace are over)

[apedad]

For some reason, somebody made a cartoon YouTube about the Louisville case (2:37 minutes).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9cR9_kWIYc

[Dan Schiavetta]

That's part of a CLE course video created by Quimbee. They invited me on to their "faculty" and I've done a few presentations for them. The videos they make, cartoonish as they seem, make for a better experience than a talking head and power point slides.

[F.D. Wolf]

Butler is generally regarded as a relatively minor figure in Supreme Court history. Despite being a lifelong Democrat, he was appointed to the Court by Republican President Warren Harding in 1923.

He was the sole dissenter in the infamous case of Buck v. Bell (1927), in which the Court upheld a Virginia statute allowing for the involuntary sterilization of the “feebleminded”. Butler’s dissent, without opinion, is usually attributed to his staunch Catholicism.

Butler’s Catholic morality may also have been on display in his opinion in Hansen v. Haff, 291 U.S. 559 (1934), another case in which he was the lone dissenter.

Hansen was a citizen of Denmark admitted to the United States in 1922, taking up work as a housekeeper in Los Angeles. In 1925 she commenced an affair with a married man. The Court noted that she did not live with him, nor did he support her, though he would occasionally buy her gifts. In 1931, Hanson and her paramour travelled to Europe. They returned to the United States through Canada and checked in together at a Seattle hotel, registering as man and wife. She was arrested in Seattle by immigration officials who sought to deport her based on a statute forbidding entry to the United States by anyone “for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral purpose”. The Court held that resuming her livelihood, not continuing the affair was her primary “purpose” for entering the country, and that “immoral purpose”, in the context of the statute, meant an act akin to prostitution, and mere “concubinage”, as the government alleged, was insufficient.

Butler did not agree.

The statute forbids admission of “persons coming into the United States for the purpose of prostitution or for any other immoral purpose.” The doctrine of this decision is that “extramarital relations” of an unmarried woman that fall short of concubinage are not within the condemnation of the statute. But there is no ground for the assumption that petitioner is not the concubine of a married man. Since 1924, she has continued illicit relations with him. They cohabited as, and held themselves out to be, husband and wife abroad and in this country while not in the vicinity of his home. Admittedly, these relations were to continue until again they reached that neighborhood. There is abundant warrant for the Secretary’s conclusion that petitioner returned to this country as, and intending to continue to be, that man’s concubine. The findings quote Webster’s definition — “a woman who cohabits with a man without being his wife.” The Secretary found her to be such a person…

Moreover, the statute is not limited to prostitution and concubinage. While the Secretary regarded her as a concubine, his decision may not fairly be held to depend upon that characterization. Plainly it rests upon the ground there stated, “that she entered for an immoral purpose” condemned by the statute. The law does not require him more definitely to classify. Refinements of nomenclature adopted for the sake of decency in speech may not be used to conjure up doubts and distinctions that obscure the real substance of the statute. The meaning of the findings is that petitioner’s doings and course of living constitute a kind of immorality that bars admission.

Id. at 563-65 (Butler, J., dissenting).

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Who was the lover?

[The Margrave of Azilia]

And on another subject, who paid this naughty Danish maid's legal expenses all the way up to the Supreme Court?

[Mark Regan]

Butler was the second nastiest of the Four Horsemen, after McReynolds. For example, he and McReynolds were the dissenters in Helvering v. Davis, the Social Security pensions case.

[Dan Schiavetta]

Glad I got you to read it!

For those with less patience here’s my summary, posted here on May 16:

Mutual Life Ins. Co. v. Hillmon, 145 U.S. 285 (decided May 16, 1892): This is the famous case which dragged on for 24 years, and this was the decision which made it famous, introducing a new rule of evidence, the hearsay exception for future intention. Sallie Hillmon tried to collect on a life insurance policy, by proving that her husband had died by accidental gunshot at Crooked Creek, Kansas in 1879. Was the deceased John Hillmon or one Fred Walters? Here, the Court agrees with the insurance company that the trial court should have admitted a letter written at Wichita from Walters to his financeé stating that he intended to go to Colorado with his new buddy Hillmon; this might show that it was really Walters who was shot because Crooked Creek was along the way and Walters, an assiduous letter writer, was never heard from again. My Evidence professor did his usual excellent job recounting this story, ending with, “To this day, nobody knows who was shot at Crooked Creek”, but Wikipedia reports on a 2006 exhumation which concluded that it probably was indeed Hillmon. Anyway, Sallie was paid off and after one final 1903 decision remanding for a seventh trial the remaining insurers settled with each other.

[SRG2]

How much went on lawyers' fees over the course of those trials?

[Dan Schiavetta]

The bureaucratic mentality!

The insurers probably thought they were being scammed and were determined to expose it. The life insurance policies the Hillmons took out just before he left home were suspiciously huge and there had been recent well publicized similar scams. Though that doesn’t explain the continued years of litigation between themselves after they paid Sallie off.