Erie Railroad v. Tompkins — Where Federal Law Changed

Rock Street in Hughestown is an unlikely address for a revolution in American law, but this is where it happened. On July twenty-seventh, nineteen thirty-four, a Hughestown resident named Harry Tompkins was walking alongside the Erie Railroad tracks when an object said to be an unlatched door, sticking out from a passing train, knocked him down, and he lost most of his right arm.

Tompkins sued the Erie Railroad, a New York company, in federal court. Federal courts at the time applied their own general common law, which would have given Tompkins a stronger claim. But in nineteen thirty-eight the United States Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Erie Railroad Company versus Tompkins, declaring that federal courts must apply the law of the state where a case arises, not some independent federal common law. Under Pennsylvania law, Tompkins actually lost his case. But the ruling itself transformed American civil litigation permanently, reshaping how federal courts handle disputes between citizens of different states and eliminating a legal double standard that had existed for nearly a century.