Aaron Danzig, 89; Lawyer in Landmark Railroad Negligence Suit

Aaron Danzig, 89, a lawyer who argued against the Erie Railroad Co. in a negligence lawsuit that became a landmark U.S. Supreme Court case, died Sept. 10 in New York City.

In the 1938 case Erie Railroad Co. vs. Tompkins, Danzig represented a man whose arm was severed in a railroad accident in Pennsylvania. In the case, Pennsylvania law required proof of willful or wanton negligence on the part of the railroad for an accident victim to collect damages.

So Danzig chose to bring suit in federal court, where a looser definition of negligence was found in prior federal decisions. A federal jury awarded his client $30,000, and the railroad appealed all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices sided with the railroad. In the decision, Justice Louis D. Brandeis rejected the concept of federal common law, or law based on previous court rulings. Brandeis reasoned that federal courts must apply state law in civil cases, except when those laws conflict with an act of Congress or the Constitution. The case resulted in a significant shift of power to state courts and helped discourage court shopping by litigants.

Danzig was born in Newark, N.J., and graduated from Columbia College in 1933. He received his law degree from Columbia in 1935.

The Supreme Court decision in the Erie Railroad case forced his company, which had been working on a contingency basis, out of business. He later formed Nemeroff, Jelline, Danzig & Paley, which specialized in corporate law.