Court Opinion

ID: 1639693
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2013-10-30 06:59:48.173012+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T10:47:57.768314
License: Public Domain

193 U.S. 460 (1904)
COSMOPOLITAN MINING COMPANY
v.
WALSH.
No. 134.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued January 20, 21, 1904.
Decided March 21, 1904.
ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLORADO.
*468 Mr. Carlton M. Bliss, with whom Mr. William H. Moody, Mr. John A. Perry and Mr. George C. Preston were on the brief, for plaintiff in error.
Mr. Charles S. Thomas and Mr. Charles J. Hughes, Jr., with whom Mr. Gerald Hughes, Mr. William H. Bryant and Mr. Harry H. Lee were on the brief, for defendant in error.
MR. JUSTICE WHITE, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
We are asked in this case to review directly the judgment of a Circuit Court of the United States, and our right to do so, if at all, depends on that clause of section 5 of the Judiciary Act of 1891, which authorizes the taking of appeals or writs of error from District or Circuit Courts direct to this court "in any case that involves the construction or application of the Constitution of the United States." Of course, if the case at bar does not really involve the construction or application of the Constitution of the United States, in the sense in which that phrase is employed in the Judiciary Act of 1891, we are precluded from examining the merits upon this writ of error. In order to determine whether the case is one which should have gone to the Circuit Court of Appeals and not have been brought directly to this court, we must look into the record, without regard to the certificate given by the trial judge. Indeed, we know of no authority for the making of such certificate.
Before coming to the record, however, we shall briefly advert to the legal principles which must control.
In Carey v. Houston & Texas Central Ry., 150 U.S. 170, the record exhibited the following controversy: Stockholders of the railway company filed a bill in equity in a Circuit Court of the *469 United States, praying, among other relief, the setting aside of a certain decree of foreclosure and sale, basing the claim upon the grounds of collusion and fraud and want of jurisdiction in the court which had entered the decree. A final decree was entered in the cause dismissing the bill and appeals were allowed both to the Circuit Court of Appeals and to this court. The appeal to this court was based upon the contention that the cause involved not only the question of the jurisdiction of the court below, but also the question of the construction or application of the Constitution of the United States. The appeal was dismissed, and in the course of the opinion, speaking through Mr. Chief Justice Fuller, it was said (pp. 179, 181):
"The Judiciary Act of March 3, 1891, in distributing the appellate jurisdiction of the national judicial system between the Supreme Court and the Circuit Court of Appeals therein established, designated the classes of cases in respect of which each of these courts was to have final jurisdiction, (the judgments of the latter being subject to the supervisory power of this court through the writ of certiorari as provided,) and the act has uniformly been so construed and applied as to promote its general and manifest purpose of lessening the burden of litigation in this court.

* * * * * * * *
"It is argued that the record shows that complainants had been deprived of their property without due process of law, by means of the decree attacked, but because the bill alleged irregularities, errors and jurisdictional defects in the foreclosure proceedings, and fraud in respect thereof and in the subsequent transactions, which might have enabled the railroad company upon a direct appeal to have avoided the decree of sale, or which, if sustained on this bill, might have justified the Circuit Court in setting aside that decree, it does not follow that the construction or application of the Constitution of the United States was involved in the case in the sense of the statute. In passing upon the validity of that decree the Circuit Court decided no question of the construction or the application of the *470 Constitution, and, as we have said, no such question was raised for its consideration. Our conclusion is that the motion to dismiss the appeal must be sustained."
In In re Lennon, decided at the same term, 150 U.S. 393, the construction given in the Carey case to the provisions of section 5 of the Judiciary Act of 1891 was reiterated. In that case an appeal had been taken directly to this court from an order of the Circuit Court of the United States denying an application for a writ of habeas corpus sued out to obtain relief from an imprisonment upon a conviction for contempt. The jurisdiction of the committing court over the cause in which the order of commitment had been made, as well as over the person of the party sentenced for contempt, was assailed. The direct appeal to this court, however, was dismissed for want of jurisdiction. After pointing out that the objection for want of jurisdiction in the court below was without any foundation, the court, speaking through Mr. Chief Justice Fuller, said (p. 400):
"Nor can the attempt be successfully made to bring the case within the class of cases in which the construction or application of the Constitution is involved in the sense of the statute, on the contention that the petitioner was deprived of his liberty without due process of law. The petition does not proceed on any such theory, but entirely on the ground of want of jurisdiction in the prior case over the subject matter and over the person of petitioner, in respect of inquiry into which the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court was sought. If, in the opinion of that court, the restraining order had been absolutely void, or the petitioner were not bound by it, he would have been discharged, not because he would otherwise be deprived of due process, but because of the invalidity of the proceedings for want of jurisdiction. The opinion of the Circuit Court was that jurisdiction in the prior suit and proceedings existed, and the discharge was refused, but an appeal from that judgment directly to this court would not, therefore, lie on the ground that the application of the Constitution was *471 involved as a consequence of an alleged erroneous determination of the questions actually put in issue by the petitioner."
It is obvious, under the construction of the Judiciary Act of 1891, announced in the cases just referred to, that this cause does not involve the construction or application of the Constitution of the United States, and therefore was not entitled to be brought directly to this court from the Circuit Court of the United States. When the proceedings at the trial are taken into view it is clear that the contentions which were urged did not require the construction of the Constitution of the United States, but simply called for the construction of the constitution and laws of the State of Colorado or the application of the principles of general law. The real contention of the mining company was that under the laws of Colorado it was essential to the legality of the service upon its alleged agent that the corporation when the service was made should have been doing business within the State, and that the agent should have been resident within the county named in the appointment as his place of residence. It was not disputed that, as authorized by its charter, the mining company had bought mines within the State of Colorado; that it had thereafter appointed, as required by the laws of Colorado, an agent within the State upon whom service of process might be made, and that there had been no direct revocation of such agency. Moreover, it was not disputed that the mining company had worked the mines in question up to a short time before the bringing of the actions in the county court of Ouray County, and that the liabilities enforced in those actions were contracted in Colorado and grew out of the operation of the mines in question. No evidence was introduced tending to show that the company had permanently ceased the operation of its mines in Colorado and withdrawn from that State; and the undisputed fact was that when the county court actions were brought it still owned the property which it had acquired as authorized by its charter.
No claim was made that the sale of the property under the *472 executions in the county court actions was void under the Constitution of the United States because wanting in due process of law, if the service on the agent was valid under the law of Colorado or the principles of general law applicable to the facts disclosed at the trial. The primary and fundamental contention of the mining company was therefore this and nothing more: that under the circumstances disclosed the service upon the statutory agent was unauthorized either by the law of Colorado or the principles of general law; and hence that it had not lost its title to the property. The claim asserted under the Constitution of the United States was, therefore, merely conjectural and amounted to this only, that if under the law of Colorado or under the general law the service on the alleged agent was void, that it would be a violation of the Constitution of the United States to give effect to judgments based on such service. Not only the statement we have made from the record, but the argument at bar, makes this a demonstration. Thus, in the discussion at bar, it was stated that it was not claimed that the State of Colorado could not without a violation of the Constitution of the United States have exacted that the authority conferred by a foreign corporation upon an agent to receive service of process should continue for the purpose of the enforcement of obligations contracted by the corporation, although the corporation had ceased to do business within the State, but that as the Colorado law when properly construed did not so provide, therefore the service was invalid, and the sale of the property of the mining company based on such service was void. This, however, as we have already shown, amounts but to the concession that the substantial controversy which the case presented involved the mere determination of what was the law of Colorado on the subject. The rulings of the court below as to the admissibility of evidence and its final direction of a verdict involved necessarily deciding that the service upon the agent was valid by the law of Colorado, or the principles of general law applicable thereto, and its action in so doing in nowise involved the construction *473 or application of any provision of the Constitution of the United States.
Writ of error dismissed.
MR. JUSTICE BREWER is of opinion that this court has jurisdiction, that the judgment of the Circuit Court was right, and should be affirmed.