Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/114/52/
Timestamp: 2019-04-26 16:32:18+00:00

Document:
The filing of separate answers tendering separate issues for trial, by several defendants sued jointly in a state court, on a joint cause of action, does not divide the suit into separate controversies so as to make it removable into the Circuit Court of the United States under the last clause of § 2, Act of March 3, 1875.
at Dover, and the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company at Manchester, New Hampshire; that bills of lading were issued by the defendants whereby they acknowledged the receipt of the cotton to be transported over their line and delivered to the respective consignees thereof; that the defendants have failed to deliver the cotton, and that the plaintiff is the assignee of all claims against them on that account.
"and that each company should pay for any damage or loss occurring on its road, and if such damage could not be located, it should be prorated between the companies forming the route over which the property would have passed to its destination in the same rations as the freight moneys."
was not authorized to act for such companies jointly, and that in all such bills of lading so issued it was expressly stipulated and agreed that in case of any loss, detriment, or damage done to or sustained by the property therein receipted for, that company should alone be held answerable therefor in whose actual custody the same might be at time of the happening thereof."
It then denied that the cotton sued for ever delivered to the line, or to either of the companies composing the same, for transportation, and averred that if any bills of lading were ever issued it was done by a person who had no authority for that purpose either from the Louisville and Nashville Company or any of the other defendants. It also averred that no loss had happened to the property while in its actual custody, and that Ide, who brought the suit, was not the real party in interest therein, but that the alleged assignment to him was without consideration, and made simply to vest the right of action in the plaintiff, who was a citizen of New York, and that the real parties in interest were the Cocheco Company and the Amoskeag Company.
"that there is in said suit a controversy which is wholly between citizens of different states -- namely, a controversy between the plaintiff, a citizen of the State of New York, and the defendant, the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company, your petitioner, a citizen of the State of Kentucky -- which can be fully determined as between them without the presence of any of the other persons or bodies corporate made parties to said suit."
The supreme court of the state accepted the petition and ordered the removal of the suit, but the circuit court, when the case got there, remanded it. This writ of error was brought for a reversal of the last order.
"And when in any suit . . . there shall be a controversy which is wholly between citizens of different states, and which can be fully determined as between them, then either one or more of the plaintiffs or defendants, actually interested in such controversy, may remove said suit to the circuit court of the United States for the proper district."
"The rule is now well established that this clause in the section refers only to suits where there exists a separate and distinct cause of action, on which a separate and distinct suit might have been brought and complete relief afforded as to such cause of action, with all the parties on one side of that controversy citizens of different states from those on the other. To say the least, the case must be one capable of separation into parts, so that in one of the parts a controversy will be presented with citizens of one or more states on one side and citizens of different states on the other, which can to fully determined without the presence of the other parties to the suit as it has been begun."
Hyde v. Ruble, 104 U. S. 407; Frazer v. Jennison, 106 U. S. 191.
to all. For the purposes of the present inquiry, the case stands as it would if the complaint contained but a single cause of action. The claim of right to a removal is based entirely on the fact that the Louisville and Nashville Company, the petitioning defendant, has presented a separate defense to the joint action by filing a separate answer, tendering separate issues for trial. This, it has been frequently decided, is not enough to introduce a separate controversy into the suit within the meaning of the statute. Hyde v. Ruble, supra; Ayres v. Wiswall, supra. Separate answers by the several defendants sued on joint causes of action may present different questions for determination, but they do not necessarily divide the suit into separate controversies. A defendant has no right to say that an action shall be several which a plaintiff elects to make joint. Smith v. Rines, 2 Sumner 348. A separate defense may defeat a joint recovery, but it cannot deprive a plaintiff of his right to prosecute his own suit to final determination in his own way. The cause of action is the subject matter of the controversy, and that is, for all the purposes of the suit, whatever the plaintiff declares it to be in his pleadings. Here it is certain joint contracts entered into by all the defendants for the transportation of property. On the one side of the controversy upon that cause of action is the plaintiff, and on the other all the defendants. The separate defenses of the defendants relate only to their respective interests in the one controversy. The controversy is the case, and the case is not divisible.
can still sue to recover cover from all, though he may be able to succeed only as to a part.
MR. JUSTICE BLATCHFORD, took no part in the decision of this case.

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