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The Locomobile Company and Miller Milling Company had sued Burrill, the Massachusetts Treasurer and
Receiver General, over taxes paid under duress, an in obedience to state statutes found unconstitutional
by an earlier decision of the U.S. Supreme Court. Subsequent state statutes provided remedy to those who
had paid those taxes by filing a petition with the Massachusetts Supreme Court. The state statutes
provided that the petition remedy was sufficient and that the remedy barred personal suit.
The U.S. Supreme Court stated that the federal constitution does not provide specific remedies to
tort actions and leaves those remedies to Congress and the states. The Court stated, “But as to trials
at common law, except when the Constitution, treaties or statutes of the United States otherwise require
or provide, the laws of the States are the rules of decision. Congress has made no provision that
governs the liability in this case and therefore has left it to the law of the State where the wrong is
done. If there were no statute the common law of Massachusetts would supplement the Constitution
as it would supplement the statutes of the State. But the common law of Massachusetts is not
superior to its statutes and may be modified by them at the pleasure of the State, at least until in
some substantial sense it impairs substantive constitutional rights, which it has not attempted to do.
Whether in an otherwise proper case the proceeding given by the statute could be instituted in the
District Court is not before us here.”
Full text: Burrill v. Locomobile
Co., 258 U.S. 34 (1922) |