Cochran

The defendant in error, as the assignee of a number of persons who had claims against the plaintiff in error for labor which they had performed in discharging the cargo of the steamship Pennsylvania at Anadir, in' Siberia, brought an action in the court below to recover judgment upon the said demands. The assignors of the causes of action had been engaged to go to Siberia as prospectors in the interest of a corporation which had received a concession from the Russian government. They went on' the Pennsylvania from Nome, Alaska, taking with them their necessary outfits. They paid full fare as first-class cabin passengers, and they paid freight on their goods. There was evidence that on arriving at Russia Spit, a point two miles from Anadir, the captain of the steamship compelled them to perform the labor of discharging the ship’s cargo by threatening to put them ashore, and to carry their outfits back to Nome unless they did so, and that they said they would take the stuff off provided they got something for it, to which the captain replied that they would have to settle that with the steamship company. The ship’s cargo, only about a fourth of which belonged to the plaintiff’s…

(dissenting).

My reason for dissenting from the foregoing opinion is that by the record it appears that the plaintiff by his pleading assumed the burden of proving his right to maintain the action as the owner by lawful assignments of the several claims for wages constituting the subject of the action. The answer made an issue as to that matter and the proof clearly sustained the answer, and did not sustain the complaint.

*703 Whilst the Alaska Code permits the assignment of choses in action, it specifically requires all actions to be prosecuted in the name of the real party in interest. Code Civ.Proc. Alaska, § 25. In some of the states having a similar code, there is a further provision that, where assignments of rights of action have been made in writing, the assignee may sue in his own name, and under that provision the courts sanction the assignment of claims for collection where no consideration has been paid and the assignee merely assumes the obligation of a collecting agent, but there is no such provision in the Code of Alaska. Therefore, as the defendant’s answer made an issue as' to the fact of a valid assignment, the plaintiff’s right depends upon proof of facts…