Docket No. 3982.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
on behalf of
Jeannette A. Mitchelhill, individually and as Executrix of the Estate of William Mitchelhill, Deceased, and James Moffatt Mitchelhill,
Claimants,
v.
GERMANY.
PARKER, Umpire, rendered the decision of the Commission.
This case is before the Umpire for decision on a certificate of the two National Commissioners[a] certifying their disagreement.
William Mitchelhill, a British national 44 years of age, was lost with the Lusitania. He was survived by his wife, Jeannette A. Mitchelhill, then 42 years of age, and one child, a son nearly 3 years of age, named James Moffatt Mitchelhill.
Mrs. Mitchelhill was born in the United States and remained an American national until her marriage with the decedent on December 11, 1907, at Kansas City, Missouri, when, under American law, she relinquished her American citizenship and, under the statutes of the United States and of Great Britain then in effect, became a British subject. She and her husband resided and had their domicile at St. Joseph, Missouri, where her husband was engaged in the wholesale seed business as a member of the firm of Mitchelhill Brothers. Here their child was born. Here the widow with her child continued to live after her husband’s death. She has always resided and had her domicile in the United States, because of which she owed temporary allegiance to it even while she was a British subject. When the marital relation was severed by her husband’s death she continued to reside in the United States and that temporary allegiance became permanent. For the reasons fully set out in the decision of this Commission in Docket No. 594, United States of America on behalf of Mary Barchard Williams (Decisions and Opinions, pages 225 – 230), the Umpire decides that the claim for damages suffered by Mrs. Mitchelhill here put forward by the United States is American in origin and, as she has ever since remained a citizen of the United States, and as her son, the only other claimant herein, was born and has ever remained an American national, these claims, in so far as they are based on damages suffered by the claimants resulting from the decedent’s death, are covered by the terms of the Treaty of Berlin.
A claim is put forward on behalf of the executrix of the decedent’s estate for $866.00, the value of personal effects and cash lost with Mr. Mitchelhill. This item of the claim is impressed with the British nationality of the decedent and hence is not within the terms of the Treaty.
The decedent was a man of good character and habits, physically sound, active, and industrious. His share of the profits from the business in which he was a partner amounted to from $4,000 to $5,000 per annum, about one-half of which he withdrew from the business for the living expenses of himself and family and permitted the balance to remain in the expanding business as working capital. The record indicates that he was devoted to his wife and child. His widow has not remarried. Her son, who was less than three years of age at the time of his father’s death, has been deprived of the benefit of that father’s care, supervision, and direction of his education.
Applying the rules announced in the Lusitania Opinion and in the other decisions of this Commission to the facts as disclosed by the record herein, the Commission decrees that under the Treaty of Berlin of August 25, 1921, and in accordance with its terms the Government of Germany is obligated to pay to the Government of the United States on behalf of (1) Jeannette A. Mitchelhill the sum of twenty thousand dollars ($20,000.00) and (2) James Moffatt Mitchelhill the sum of ten thousand dollars ($10,000.00), with interest on each of said sums at the rate of five per cent per annum from November 1, 1923; and further decrees that the Government of Germany is not obligated to pay to the Government of the United States any amount on behalf of Jeannette A. Mitchelhill as Executrix of the Estate of William Mitchelhill, Deceased.
Done at Washington March 19, 1925.
EDWIN B. PARKER,
Umpire.
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[a] Dated March 14, 1925.
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