Chicago Great Western Railroad v. Basham

Background

A person sued a railroad company under the Employers’ Liability Act to recover damages for the death of a relative. A jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff and judgment followed. The railroad appealed to the Iowa Supreme Court, which issued an opinion for affirmance on November 26, 1915, denied a first rehearing on April 7, 1916, and after further consideration overruled a second rehearing petition and entered the final judgment on December 18, 1916. A writ of error was applied for here on December 19, 1916.

Reasoning

The central question was whether this Court could be reached by writ of error after the Act of September 6, 1916 changed how federal review of state-court decisions works. That statute limited routine writs of error and made many state-court final judgments reviewable only by discretionary certiorari, while preserving older review rights temporarily for judgments entered before the act took effect. The Court found that because the Iowa decision remained open to rehearing until December 18, 1916, the judgment became final on that date and therefore fell under the new law’s certiorari-only procedure. For that reason the writ of error was improper.

Real world impact

The ruling is procedural: it prevents this particular appeal and makes clear that, for similar cases, review in this Court must proceed by certiorari when the state court’s judgment becomes final after the 1916 law took effect. The decision does not decide the underlying merits of the wrongful-death claim.