Court Opinion

ID: 9418125
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:09:26.070098+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:21:55.795807
License: Public Domain

The Chief Justice
dissenting.
The right of action was not vested in the next friend and the citizenship of the infant controls. The case is one, therefore, in which the plaintiff was a citizen and resident of the State of Illinois' and the defendant a corporation created and existing under the laws of the State of- Kentucky, and a citizen and resident of that State. The action was brought in the Circuit Court of the city of St. Louis, Missouri, of which State neither of the parties was a citizen. The fact that the next .friend, who also acted as attorney-at-law for the minor, was a citizen of Missouri, is immaterial.
The question is whether, where neither of the parties is a citizen of the State in which the action is, brought, the juris*509diction of the Circuit Court can be maintained if both parties consent to it. Jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts depends upon some act of Congress, Stevenson v. Fain, 195 U. S. 165, 167; Turner v. Bank, 4 Dall. 8, 10; McIntire v. Wood, 7 Cranch, 504, 506; and I quote at length from the opinion of Mr. Justice Gray in Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444, because he therein examines the statutory provisions bearing on the question before us, saying (p. 446): *511to be brought in any other district than that whereof the defendant is an inhabitant; and the effect is that 'where the jurisdiction is founded upon-any of the causes mentioned in this section, except the citizenship of the parties, it must be brought in the district of which the defendant is an inhabitant; but where the jurisdiction is founded solely upon the fact that the parties are citizens of different States, the suit may be brought in the district in which either the plaintiff or the defendant resides.’ McCormick Co. v. Walthers, 134 U. S. 41, 43. And the general object of this act, as appears upon its face, and hag been often declared by this court, is to contract, not to enlarge, the jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts of the United States. Smith v. Lyon, 133 U. S. 315, 320; In re Pennsylvania Co., 137 U. S. 451, 454; Fisk v. Henarie, 142 U. S. 459, 467.
*509“In carrying out the provision of the Constitution which declares that the judicial power of the United States shall extend to controversies ‘between citizens of different States,’ Congress, by the Judiciary Act of September 24,' 1789, c. 20, § 11, conferred jurisdiction on the Circuit Court of suits of a civil nature, at common law or in equity, ‘between a citizen of the State where the suit is brought and a citizen of another State,’ and provided that ‘no civil suit shall be brought’ ‘against an inhabitant of the United States,’ ‘in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant, or in which he shall be found at the time of serving the writ.’ 1 Stat. 78, 79.
“The word ‘inhabitant,’ in that act, 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 the State, like the districts of Maine and Massachusetts in the State of Massachusetts, and the districts of Virginia and Kentucky in the State of Virginia, established by § 2 of the same act. 1 Stat. 73. It was held by this court from the beginning that an averment that a party resided within the State or the district in which the suit was brought was not sufficient to support the jurisdiction, because in the common use of words a resident might be a citizen, and therefore it was not stated expressly and beyond ambiguity that he was a citizen of the State, which was the fact on which the jurisdiction depended under the provisions of the Constitution and of the Judiciary Act. . . .
“By the act of May 4, 1858, c. 27, § 1, it was enacted that, *510in a State containing more than one district, actions not local should ‘be brought in the district in which the defendant resides,’ or ‘if there be two or more defendants residing in different districts in the same State,’ then in either district. 11 Stat. 272. The whole purport and effect of that act was not to enlarge, but to restrict and distribute jurisdiction. It applied only to a State containing two or more districts; and directed suits against citizens of such a State to be brought jn that district thereof in which they or cither of them resided. It did not subject defendants to any new liability to be sued ’ out of the State of which they were citizens, but simply proscribed in which district of that' State they might be sued.
“These provisions of the acts of. 1789 and 1858 were substantially reenacted in sections 739 and 740 of the Revised Statutes.
“The act of March 3, 1875, c. 137, § 1, after giving the Circuit Courts jurisdiction of suits ‘in which .there shall be a controversy between citizens of different States,’ and enlarging their jurisdiction in other respects, substantially reenacted the corresponding provision of the . act of 1789 by providing that no civil suit should be brought ‘against any person,’ ‘in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant or in which he shall be found’ at the time of service, with certain exceptions not affecting the matter now under consideration. 18 Stat. 470.
“The act of 1887, both in its original form and as corrected in 1888, reenacts the rule that no civil suit slip.ll be brought against any person in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant, but omits the clause allowing a defendant to be sued in the district where he is found, and adds this clause: ‘But where the jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the. action is between citizens of different States, suit shall be brought only in the district of the residence of either -the plaintiff or the defendant.’ 24 Stat. 552; 25 Stat. 434. As has been adjudged by this court, the last clause is bjr way of proviso to the next preceding clause, which forbids any suit
*511“As to natural persons, therefore, it cannot be doubted that the effect of this act, read in the light of earlier acts upon the same subject, and of the_ judicial construction thereof, is that the phrase ‘district of the residence of’ a person is equivalent to ‘district whereof he is an inhabitant,’ and cannot be construed as giving jurisdiction, by reason of citizenship, to a Circuit Court held in a State of which neither party is a citizen, but, on the contrary, restricts the jurisdiction to the district in which one of the parties resides within the State of which he is a citizen; and that this act, therefore, having taken away the alternative, permitted in the earlier acts, of suing a person in the district ‘in which he shall be found,’ requires any suit, the jurisdiction of which is founded only on its being between citizens of different States, to be brought in the State of which one is a citizen, and in the district therein of which he. is an inhabitant and resident.”
Treating the clause that “where the jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the- action is between citizens of different States, suit shall be brought only in the district of the residence of either the plaintiff or the defendant” as by way of proviso, that proviso must be regarded as excluding from the enacting clause “some possible ground of misinterpretation of it, as *512extending to cases not intended by the legislature to be brought within its purview.” Minas v. United States, 15 Pet. 445; Austin v. United States, 155 U. S. 417, 431.
Jurisdiction of the subject-matter is given only by law and cannot be conferred by consent, and, therefore, the objection that a court is not given such jurisdiction- by law, if well founded, cannot, of course, be waived by the parties.
In my judgment, § 1, in cases where litigants are citizens of different States, confers jurisdiction only on the Circuit Court of the district of the plaintiff’s residence and the Circuit Court of the district of the defendant’s residence. And it is not conferred on the Circuit Court of the district of neither of them, and cannot be even by consent. If this were not so, as Mr. Justice Harlan said in Bors v. Preston, 111 U. S. 255, “it would be in the power of the parties by negligence or design to invest those courts with a jurisdiction expressly denied to them;’’ or where it may also be said, such jurisdiction was not expressly conferred. This view was expressed in Ex parte Wisner, 203 U. S. 449, and although it is true that the proposition need not have been there announced, because in that case it was correctly decided that there was not a consent to the jurisdiction by both parties, yet the rule was so laid down, and the result of the opinion in this case is to disapprove of and overrule In re Wisner, so far as that proposition is concerned. And as I adhere to that view I dissent.
But it should be added that this case was brought in a state court and removed by the defendant into the Federal court under the second section of the act of August 13, 1888, which provided “ any other suit of a civil nature, at law or in equity, of which the Circuit Courts of the United States are given jurisdiction by the preceding section, which are now pending, or which may hereafter be brought in any state court, may be removed into the Circuit Court of the United State's for the proper district by the defendant or defendants therein being non-residents of that State.” And it is settled that.in order to make a suit removable under this part of the act itTnust be one *513which the plaintiff could have brought originally in the United States Circuit Court. The right of removal given to the non-resident defendant or defendants by the second clause of §2, removing the cause from the state court to the United States Circuit Court, is subject to the limitations of that clause that it must be a suit within the jurisdiction of such Circuit Court, and that it must be removed to the proper district, and therefore the act does not authorize him or them to remove it to the United States Circuit Court held in a district wherein that court was not given jurisdiction of the suit removed, or to any other judicial district in which the suit is not pending, as provided in § 3. Plaintiff brought his suit in a district wherein the defendant could not be sued in the Federal court within the meaning of the act. Hill v. Woodland Amusement Company, 158 Fed. Rep. 530.
The proper district within the meaning of the second clause of the second section means either of the districts made “proper districts”'by the first section of the act, and when the third section requires the petition to be “for the removal of such suit into a Circuit Court to be held in the district.where such suit is.pending,” it must have been contemplated that the suit would be pending in a “proper district.” It is plain that the entire act is not to be construed as giving jurisdiction by reason of citizenship to a Circuit Court held in a State of which neither party is a citizen, but, on the contrary, that it restricts the jurisdiction to the district in which one of the parties resides within the State of which he is a citizen,