The Moses Taylor (1867)
Citation: 71 U.S. (4 Wall.) 411 · Court: Supreme Court of the United States (opinion by Field, J.) · Decided: February 4, 1867, in the December 1866 Term. The Supreme Court’s official decision-date chronology identifies February 4; the Justia page labels the term year 1866. The existing slug is preserved to avoid breaking links.
Source note (2026-10-18):
- source replaced 2026-10-18: static.case.law robots-disallowed; permitted full-text copy at Legal Information Institute (Cornell) U.S. Reports text (replaces
https://static.case.law/us/71/cases/0411-01.json; retrieval dates stated elsewhere on this page refer to the earlier copy).
Facts
A passenger sued the steamship Moses Taylor in a California court under the California statute (part of the Code of Civil Procedure) authorizing actions in rem against vessels for listed causes, here breach of a contract of carriage on the high seas. The vessel’s agent objected that the cause was within the exclusive cognizance of the federal admiralty courts; the California courts rejected the objection and entered judgment against the vessel.
Holding
The California statute, “to the extent in which it authorizes actions in rem against vessels for causes of action cognizable in the admiralty, invests her courts with admiralty jurisdiction,” which the Judiciary Act of 1789 made exclusive in the federal courts. A proceeding in rem as used in admiralty “is not a remedy afforded by the common law,” so the saving-to-suitors clause does not preserve it for state courts (“The case before us is not within the saving clause of the ninth section”). The County Court’s judgment was reversed and the cause remanded “with directions to dismiss the action for want of jurisdiction.”
Reasoning
Congress may make the federal judicial power exclusive, and the Judiciary Act placed “civil causes of admiralty and maritime jurisdiction” exclusively in the federal courts from their commencement; a state statute creating an in rem action against a vessel for a maritime claim therefore exceeds state jurisdiction.
Practical impact
- Guam’s 7 GCA §§ 24501–24515 (“Actions Against Steamers, Vessels, and Boats”) are taken from
California CCP §§ 813–827, the same statutory family at issue here. A buyer at a Guam Chief of
Police sale under § 24512 of a vessel attached for a maritime claim faces the risk that the
underlying in rem proceeding was outside the local court’s jurisdiction; whether this 1867
holding applies to the Superior Court of Guam’s particular statutory proceeding was not located —
needs_verification. A marshal’s sale in the District Court of Guam, which has the jurisdiction of a U.S. district court (48 U.S.C. § 1424(b), Office of the Law Revision Counsel release point 119-121), uses the federal jurisdictional channel (see admiralty-arrest-and-marshals-sale).
Good-law status
needs_verification for current later judicial treatment. The entire opinion was read
through the web reader in Justia’s unofficial U.S. Reports reproduction on
2026-10-17. CAP and the direct Library of Congress PDF request returned 403;
the official Supreme Court chronology was successfully downloaded and read for the
decision date. No later-treatment conclusion is inferred from the age of the case. On 2026-10-18 the full official U.S. Reports PDF (GovInfo, USREPORTS-71-411) was retrieved and retained in schema/verification/guam-evidence-2026-10-18/cases/; the quoted holding and the “want of jurisdiction” disposition match that text.
The inherited 2026-10-16 review attributed an actual retrieval to
https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/71/411 (unofficial CAP transcription);
that host’s robots.txt disallows automated access, so the earlier copy is historical provenance only and is not relied on; this page rests on the official GovInfo U.S. Reports text.
Applies in →
guam · vessels · admiralty-arrest-and-marshals-sale · maritime-liens-and-preferred-ship-mortgages
Legal information, not legal advice.