Court Opinion

ID: 8859250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 17:42:05.173318+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:05:46.039536
License: Public Domain

WOODS, Circuit Judge,
after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
The plaintiffs in error were not sued nor was judgment rendered against them as receivers of the Wisconsin Central Railroad Company. In that capacity they were not parties to the record, unless they succeeded in making themselves so by an averment in their answer, which in so far as it was designed to show that the suit was intended to be or ought to have been brought against them as receivers of that company was not true, and can hardly be deemed to have been ingenuous. Only the plaintiff and his counsel were ignorant and in confusion about the names of the different railroad companies, and whether liability should be alleged against the defendants as receivers of a company of one name or another. The defendants and their attorneys, it is evident upon the testimony which they adduced, were cognizant of the facts from the beginning; and, the action having been commenced against them as receivers of a company described by a name which had no existence, it was their plain duty to suggest in then-answer the capacity in which they knew themselves to be liable, if Hable at all, for the plaintiff’s injury, and not to lender a false or vain issue in the name of a company as representatives of which they could not be made responsible for tire injury suffered. The course pursued by them made it immaterial whether the summons was served upon one who was their agent as receivers of the Wisconsin 'Central Company. Their appearance to the action was a full appearance. Their answer went to the merits, and the assertion of misnomer, and the misleading suggestion of Wisconsin Central Railroad Company as the name of the company which they represented, did not make the appearance special, or an appearance in the capacity of receivers for that company only. It was an appearance for every proper purpose under the rules of practice, including, of course, any legitimate correction in the names or description of parties and a corresponding amendment of the process.
If it was desired to object to the jurisdiction of the court on the ground that the action had not been brought in the right district, or that the summons had not been served upon an agent who represented the defendants as receivers of the Wisconsin Central Company, it should have been done by a plea to the jurisdiction, or, perhaps, by a motion showing that they were liable, if at all, as receivers of the *948Wisconsin Central Company, and that in that capacity they had not been served with and were not amenable to the process of the court.
There are, perhaps, other grounds upon which it might be held that the plaintiffs in error waived objection to the jurisdiction of the court over them, but they need not be considered. We rest our ruling upon the proposition that, being receivers for two companies, neither of which was correctly named in the praecipe, summons, return of service, and the complaint, they were bound, if they chose to answer to the merits, to suggest the right name, and not to tender a false issue; and that, having taken the latter course, they waived all objections to the character or service of the process, and came under the jurisdiction of the court. The judgment below is therefore affirmed.