Source: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/161/588.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 21:25:26+00:00

Document:
Nelson Case, for defendant in error.
Mr., chief Justice FULLER delivered the opinion of the court.
The Mercantile Trust Company, a corporation of New York, filed its bill against the Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway Company, a corporation of Kansas, in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Kansas, for the foreclosure of certain mortgages, and Eddy and Cross were appointed receivers, upon whose decease Rouse was substituted.
If, as is said, the intervener, the railroad company, and the receivers were all citizens of Kansas, and this had been an action at law, and not a petition of intervention in the equity suit, the jurisdiction of the circuit court would nevertheless have been maintainable on the ground that it was one arising under the constitution and laws of the United States in that the receivers were appointed by the circuit court, and derived their powers from, and discharged their duties subjec to, those orders; and the right to sue them as such, without leave of the court which appointed them, was conferred by section 3 of the act of March 3, 1887, c. 373 (24 Stat. 552). Railroad Co. v. Cox, 145 U.S. 593 , 12 Sup. Ct. 905; Tennessee v. Union & Planters' Bank, 152 U.S. 454 , 14 Sup. Ct. 654.
In Railroad Co. v. Cox the objection was raised that neither of the defendants was an inhabitant of the district in which the suit was brought, and it was remarked that, if the suit was regarded as merely ancillary to the receivership, the objection was without force; but that, irrespective of that, the immunity was a personal privilege, which might be waived, and which in that case had been waived. In the case before us the question in respect of an independent action at law is not presented, since this intervention was nothing more than an application for the allowance of a claim under the foreclosure proceedings and as against the property or fund being administered by the court. Rouse v. Letcher, 156 U.S. 47 , 15 Sup. Ct. 266. Defendants raised no objection to the determination of the entire matter on the intervention, and did not ask that an action at law be directed to be brought, and the reference of the questions of fact to a jury was within the discretion of the court, and did not change the character of the proceeding. [161 U.S. 588, 591] The jurisdiction of the circuit court over the petition was clearly referable to its jurisdiction of the equity suit, which depended wholly upon diverse citizenship; and the case comes directly within recent decisions of this court holding that under such circumstances the decrees and judgments of the circuit courts of appeals are made final by section 6 of the judiciary act of March 3, 1891. Rouse v. Letcher, supra; Gregory v. Van Ee, 160 U.S. 643 , 16 Sup. Ct. 431; Carey v. Railway Co., 161 U.S. 115 , 16 Sup. Ct. 537. As the final order below was affirmed by the circuit court of appeals, we are not called upon to entertain jurisdiction simply because that affirmance was entered on the writ of error rather than the appeal.

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