## Facts

- Bates, a New York resident, owned iron safes physically located in Chicago, Illinois.
- In New York, Bates executed a chattel mortgage on the safes to Van Buskirk, also a New York resident.
- Shortly thereafter, Green, a New York resident and creditor of Bates, obtained an Illinois writ of attachment against Bates’s property and had it levied on the safes in Illinois.
- The attachment was levied before Van Buskirk took possession of the safes and before the mortgage was recorded or otherwise made effective under Illinois recording/notice requirements.
- The Illinois attachment suit proceeded to judgment; the safes were sold to satisfy Green’s debt.
- Van Buskirk then sued Green in New York for the value of the safes, and Green asserted the Illinois attachment proceedings as a bar.
- New York courts ruled for Van Buskirk, treating New York law of the parties’ domicile as controlling the mortgage’s priority over the attachment.

## Issues

1. Whether priority and validity of claims to tangible personal property located and judicially seized in Illinois are governed by Illinois law despite all claimants being domiciled in New York.
2. Whether New York was constitutionally required to give the Illinois attachment judgment the same effect on title it would have in Illinois under the Full Faith and Credit Clause and the Act of 1790.
3. Whether the Supreme Court had jurisdiction to review the state-court judgment where a party claimed a federal right to full faith and credit and the state court ruled against that claim.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court held it had jurisdiction to review because Green specially asserted a federal right under the Full Faith and Credit Clause and the state court denied that right.
- On the merits, the Court reversed the New York judgment and remanded.
- The Court held Illinois law controlled the liability of the safes to attachment and the effect of the Illinois seizure and sale on title.
- Applying Illinois law, the Court held Green’s Illinois attachment and sale took priority over Van Buskirk’s unrecorded, out-of-state chattel mortgage as against third parties.
- The Court held New York failed to give the Illinois proceedings the same operative effect upon title that they had in Illinois, violating full faith and credit.

## Legal Principles

- For tangible personal property seized and sold under process in the state where the property is located, the property’s liability to that process and the resulting title effects are determined by the law of that state (the situs), not merely by the parties’ domicile.
- The common-law fiction that personalty follows the owner’s domicile yields when justice requires examination of the property’s actual location and the forum that exercised control over it.
- A valid sister-state judgment affecting rights in specific property must receive in other states the same faith and credit—i.e., the same conclusive effect on title—it would receive in the rendering state.
- When a party asserts a federal right to full faith and credit and the state court rules against it, the judgment is reviewable in the Supreme Court under federal appellate jurisdiction over state decisions denying federal rights.

## Conclusion

Because the safes were located and adjudicated in Illinois, Illinois law governed the attachment’s priority over an unrecorded chattel mortgage, and New York was required to treat the Illinois judgment as conclusive to the same extent Illinois would; the Supreme Court therefore reversed the New York courts for denying full faith and credit.


Green v. Van Buskirk, 74 U.S. (7 Wall.) 139 (1868)