Court Opinion

ID: 9833212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 22:31:33.812432+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:00.489624
License: Public Domain

*492ON MOTION EOR REHEARING.
Defendant in error sought to remove this case to the United States Circuit Court upon the ground that he was, at the time the suit was instituted “an alien and the subject of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and a resident of the State of Tamaulipas in the Republic of Mexico.” The application for removal was properly denied. The Act of Congress of the United States passed on the 13th day .of August, 1888, prescribed the ground for removal of causes which is applicable to the facts of this case to be a controversy ‘^between citizens of a State and foreign States, citizens or subjects.” Texas is not a citizen of a State, therefore does not come within the terms of the statute. Postal Tel. Cable Co. v. Alabama, 155 U. S., 487.
O’Connor insists that the State of Texas is estopped by the recitals in the decree of the District Court of Webb County entered on the 8th day of March, 1862, in the suit by Daniel Ruggles v. State of Texas, that the government of Spain “gave and donated the land above and below the said town (Palafox) to settlers of the same in the form and shape of porciones.” It is claimed that the recital is sufficient to establish an outstanding title as against the State. It is a settled rule of law that to operate as an estoppel against a party to a judgment the decision must be of a fact .directly involved in and necessary to the determination of the issue presented to the court. Black on Judg., sec. 611; Horten v. Hamilton, 20 Texas, 610; Lewis & Kelson Appeal, 67 Pa. St.,. 153. The proceeding in that case presented the issue to the court that Daniel Ruggles claimed title to the land by virtue of a grant made by the Spanish government to some person from whom Ruggles derived his title, and this fact being established, another issue arose, which was, that after making the grant the Spanish government in the exercise of its sovereign power expropriated or condemned the land and thereby restored it to the ownership of the government.
The incidental question which is presented by the recital in the judgment, that after resuming the title to the land the Spanish government made a donation of a part of it to other parties, neither tends to support the title asserted by Ruggles nor to defeat the claim by the State that the government had extinguished that title by the legitimate exercise of its power, therefore, the recital is of an immaterial fact which derives no force from being stated in the judgment.
The motion for rehearing is therefore overruled.
Opinion filed June 8, 1903.