Robertson v. Wegmann

In early 1970, Clay L. Shaw filed a civil rights action under 42 U. S. C. § 1983 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana. Four years later, before trial had commenced, Shaw died. The question presented is whether the District Court was required to adopt as federal law a Louisiana survivorship statute, which would have caused this action to abate, or was free instead to create a federal common-law rule allowing the action to survive. Resolution of this question turns on whether the state statute is “inconsistent with the Constitution and laws of the United…