| Swift v. Tyson | ||||||||||||
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| Decided January 25, 1842 |
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| Holding | ||||||||||||
| Federal courts were to create and apply a federal common law in diversity cases. | ||||||||||||
| Court membership | ||||||||||||
| Chief Justice: Roger B. Taney Associate Justices: Joseph Story, Smith Thompson, John McLean, Henry Baldwin, James Moore Wayne, John Catron, John McKinley, Peter Vivian Daniel |
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| Case opinions | ||||||||||||
| Majority by: Story Joined by: unanimous Concurrence/dissent by: Catron |
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| Overruled by | ||||||||||||
| Erie Railroad Co. v. Tompkins, | ||||||||||||
Swift v. Tyson, 41 U.S. 1 (1842), was a case in which the United States Supreme Court determined that United States federal courts hearing cases brought under their diversity jurisdiction must apply the statutory law of the states, but instead of applying the court-made common law of the states, they should develop a federal common law. This case has been criticized by some for forum shopping because the facts of the case involved the quintessence of the need for a uniform nation wide rule, the handling of negotiable instruments -- and the fact that most of the states have subscribed to the Uniform Commercial Code's Article 5 shows us that it did. The problem was that the "rule in Swift" was extended by later judges to cover all of common law and not just that of commercial paper, bank notes, bankers acceptances and other forms of "near money". This decision resulted in forum shopping, wherein plaintiffs would file their cases in federal as opposed to state courts in order to have a different law applied. This was seen to result in manipulation of the federal court system and was eventually overturned in Erie Railroad v. Tompkins, 304 U.S. 64 (1938).
