U.S. Supreme Court HARTFORD ACCIDENT & INDEMNITY CO. v. DELTA & PINE LAND CO., 292 U.S. 143 (1934)

[Page 292 U.S. 143, 150]

ing a Tennessee contract and lawful in that state, could Mississippi, without deprivation of due process, enlarge the appellant's obligations by reason of the state's alleged interest in the transaction? We think not. Conceding that ordinarily a state may prohibit performance within is borders even of a contract validly made elsewhere, if the performance would violate its laws (Home Insurance Company v. Dick, supra, page 408 of 281 U.S., 50 S.Ct. 338, 74 A.L.R. 701), it may not, on grounds of policy, ignore a right which has lawfully vested elsewhere, if, as here, the interest of the forum has but slight connection with the substance of the contract obligations. Here performance at most involved only the casual payment of money in Mississippi. In such a case the question ought to be regarded as a domestic one to be settled by the law of the state where the contract was made. A legislative policy which attempts to draw to the state of the forum control over the obligations of contracts elsewhere validly consummated and to convert them for all purposes into contracts of the forum, regardless of the relative importance of the interests of the forum as contrasted with those created at the place of the contract, conflicts with the guaranties of the Fourteenth Amendment. AEtna Life Insurance Company v. Dunken, supra; Home Insurance Company v. Dick, supra. Cases may occur in which enforcement of a contract as made outside a state may be so repugnant to its vital interests as to justify enforcement in a different manner. Compare Bond v. Hume, 243 U.S. 15, 22, 37 S.Ct. 366. But clearly this is not such a case.

Our conclusion renders unnecessary a consideration of the claims made under the full faith and credit and contract clauses of the Federal Constitution.

The judgment is reversed, and the cause is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.

So ordered.