Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/87665/galveston-harrisburg-san-antonio-ry-co-vs-gonzales
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 04:36:42+00:00

Document:
In re Hohorst, 150 U. S. 653 , distinguished from this case.
Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202 , and Mexican Central Railway v. Pinkney, 149 U. S. 194 , followed in holding that a statute of a state which makes an appearance in behalf of a defendant, although in terms limited to the purpose of objecting to the jurisdiction of the court, a waiver of immunity from jurisdiction by reason of nonresidence is not applicable, under Rev.Stat. § 914, to actions in a circuit court of the United States held within the state.
We have no doubt of our authority under the Act of February 25, 1889, to review the decision of the court below sustaining its jurisdiction over the case, and we have already held that the provision of the Texas statute which gives to a special appearance made to challenge the court's jurisdiction the force and effect of a general appearance, so as to confer jurisdiction over the person of the defendant, is not binding upon the federal courts in that state. Southern Pacific Railway v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202 ; Mexican Central Railway v. Pinkney, 149 U. S. 194 .
In Shaw v. Quincy Mining Company, 145 U. S. 444 , a citizen of Massachusetts sought to maintain a bill in equity in the Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York against the Quincy Mining Company, a corporation organized under the laws of Michigan, and having a usual place of business in the City of New York, and the question arose whether the court had jurisdiction over such a suit. It was held that it did not. In the opinion of the Court, it was said that the word "inhabitant" in the act of 1789 was apparently used not in any larger meaning than "citizen," but to avoid the incongruity of speaking of a citizen of anything less than a state, when the intention was to cover not only a district which included a whole state, but also two districts in one state.
In the Case of Hohorst, 150 U. S. 653 , decided at the present term, it was held that the clause in question, that no civil suit should be brought against any person in any other district than that whereof he was an inhabitant, was manifestly inapplicable to a suit brought by a citizen of one of the United States against an alien, and that the words of the provision evidently looked to those persons, and those persons only, who are inhabitants of some district within the United States.
This conclusion is rested upon the doctrine announced in Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444 , and Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202 , that a corporation incorporated in one state only and doing business in another state was not an inhabitant of the latter within the meaning of the Judiciary Acts, and liable to be sued in the circuit courts of the United States held therein, if objection is properly made.
The present case is clearly distinguishable from these authorities in two respects: first that the defendant corporation is a citizen of the State of Texas, in which it is sued, and second that the parties to the controversy are not citizens of different states of the union, as was the case in those decisions. In other words, Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444 , and Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202 , dealt with cases where the controversy was between citizens of different states, while the present case involves a controversy between an alien and a citizen, and presents the question whether the citizenship of the defendant corporation is coextensive with the line of its road, and the actual exercise of its franchise within the state of its creation, or is limited and restricted to the place where its chief office is located.
This construction thus placed upon these clauses of the act was recognized and reaffirmed in Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444 .
The Judiciary Act, in declaring that circuit courts of the United States shall have original cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several states, of all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity between citizens of a state and foreign states, citizens, or subjects, when the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of interest and costs, the sum of $2,000, means, as I understand its language, that the circuit courts of the United States shall have the same jurisdiction as the state courts; otherwise, it could not be concurrent. Now the state court at El Paso would have had undoubted jurisdiction of the present suit, and although the United States circuit court, held at the same place, has concurrent (the same) jurisdiction over the subject matter and the parties, the result of the Court's opinion is to deny the jurisdiction of the federal court. 25 U. S. Early,@ 12 Wheat. 147, 25 U. S. 148 .
"where a corporation is created by the laws of a state, the legal presumption is that its members are citizens of the state in which alone the corporate body has a legal existence. "
In Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444 , MR. JUSTICE GRAY, speaking for the Court, said in effect that the word "inhabitant" in the act of 1887 was apparently used in no larger or different meaning than "citizen."

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