## Facts

- A Vermont electric utility employed a Vermont resident lineman under an employment contract made in Vermont for emergency service in Vermont or New Hampshire.
- The lineman was sent to a substation just over the state line in New Hampshire to replace fuses and was killed while performing that work.
- Vermont’s workers’ compensation statute, tacitly accepted by employer and employee, applied to injuries “in Vermont or elsewhere” and made compensation the exclusive remedy, barring tort actions.
- The employee’s administratrix sued in New Hampshire for wrongful death based on employer negligence under New Hampshire law, which permitted an employee to elect after injury between negligence litigation and compensation.
- The case was removed to federal court on diversity; the trial court rejected the employer’s defense that Vermont’s exclusivity barred the New Hampshire tort claim, and a jury returned a verdict for the plaintiff.
- The court of appeals ultimately affirmed; the Supreme Court granted certiorari.

## Issues

1. Whether the Full Faith and Credit Clause required a New Hampshire forum (including a federal diversity court sitting there) to recognize Vermont’s workers’ compensation exclusivity as a defense to a wrongful-death tort action arising from an injury occurring in New Hampshire.
2. Whether recognizing Vermont’s exclusivity defense would be an impermissible extraterritorial application of Vermont law or could be refused based on New Hampshire public policy.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court reversed the judgment for the plaintiff.
- Vermont’s workers’ compensation scheme, accepted by the parties through their Vermont employment relationship, was a valid defense barring the New Hampshire tort action.
- The New Hampshire federal court’s refusal to recognize that defense violated the Full Faith and Credit Clause.
- Giving effect to the Vermont defense was not an impermissible extraterritorial application of Vermont law.
- New Hampshire’s compensation policy did not justify disregarding the Vermont defense in a dispute involving the rights and obligations of Vermont residents under a Vermont employment relationship.

## Legal Principles

- A state statute is a “public act” within Article IV’s Full Faith and Credit command, and forums must give it effect when constitutionally required.
- A federal court sitting in diversity has the same full faith and credit obligation as courts of the state in which it sits.
- Where an employment relationship is formed and centered in one state and that state’s workers’ compensation law makes compensation the exclusive remedy for injuries “in-state or elsewhere,” the resulting exclusivity can bar tort liability in another state as a defense.
- A forum’s general preference for permitting tort recovery does not, by itself, permit refusal to recognize a sister state’s statutory defense governing out-of-state parties’ relationship.
- Recognizing a sister state’s statutory defense based on the parties’ prior legal relationship differs from applying that sister state’s law as the affirmative basis for a cause of action.

## Conclusion

The Court held that, because the employer and employee were Vermont domiciliaries bound by a Vermont workers’ compensation scheme making compensation the exclusive remedy for work injuries wherever occurring, New Hampshire was constitutionally required to honor that exclusivity as a defense to a New Hampshire wrongful-death tort claim.


Bradford Electric Light Co. v. Clapper, 286 U.S. 145 (1932)