Court Opinion

ID: 96688
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2010-04-28 16:41:38+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:10:57.395398
License: Public Domain

206 U.S. 323 (1907)
In re JAMES POLLITZ, PETITIONER.
No. 16, Original.
Supreme Court of United States.
Argued April 8, 1907.
Decided May 27, 1907.
PETITION FOR WRIT OF MANDAMUS.
*325 Mr. Roger Foster for petitioner.
Mr. Rush Taggart, with whom Mr. Lawrence Greer was on the brief, for respondents.
*330 MR. CHIEF JUSTICE FULLER, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
The suit was commenced in the state court by a citizen *331 and resident of the city, county and State of New York against a corporation, a citizen of the State of Ohio, and other defendants, many of whom were residents and citizens of the State of New York, the value of the matter in dispute, exclusive of interest and costs, exceeding the jurisdictional sum.
The defendant, the Wabash Railroad Company, a citizen of Ohio, filed its petition and bond in proper form for the removal of the suit into the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York, on the ground of separable controversy so far as it was concerned, and it was removed accordingly. A motion to remand was made and denied by the Circuit Court, which held that the controversy was separable, and that the other defendants were not indispensable or necessary parties to the complete determination of that separable controversy.
The issue on the motion to remand was whether such determination could be had without the presence of defendants other than the Wabash Railroad Company, and this was judicially determined by the Circuit Court, to which the decision was by law committed.
The application to this court is for the issue of the writ of mandamus directing the Circuit Court to reverse its decision, although in its nature a judicial act and within the scope of its jurisdiction and discretion.
But mandamus cannot be issued to compel the court below to decide a matter before it in a particular way or to review its judicial action had in the exercise of legitimate jurisdiction, nor can the writ be used to perform the office of an appeal or writ of error.
Where the court refuses to take jurisdiction of a case and proceed to judgment therein, when it is its duty to do so and there is no other remedy, mandamus will lie unless the authority to issue it has been taken away by statute. In re Grossmayer, Petitioner, 177 U.S. 48; In re Hohorst, Petitioner, 150 U.S. 653. And so where the court assumes to exercise jurisdiction on removal when on the face of the record absolutely *332 no jurisdiction has attached. Virginia v. Paul, 148 U.S. 107; Ex parte Wisner, 203 U.S. 449.
"In In re Hohorst, Petitioner, 150 U.S. 653, the bill was filed in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York against a corporation and certain other defendants, and was dismissed against the corporation for want of jurisdiction. From that order complainant took an appeal to this court, which was dismissed for want of jurisdiction because the order, not disposing of the case as to all the defendants, was not a final decree from which an appeal would lie. 148 U.S. 262. Thereupon an application was made to this court for leave to file a petition for a writ of mandamus to the judges of the Circuit Court to take jurisdiction and to proceed against the company in the suit. Leave was granted and a rule to show cause entered thereon, upon the return to which the writ of mandamus was awarded." In re Atlantic City Railroad, 164 U.S. 633.
In Ex parte Wisner, Wisner, a citizen of the State of Michigan, commenced an action at law in the Circuit Court for the city of St. Louis, State of Missouri, against Beardsley, a citizen of the State of Louisiana. After service of summons on Beardsley, he filed his petition to remove the action from the state court into the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Missouri, on the ground of diversity of citizenship, with the proper bond, and an order of removal was made by the state court, and the transcript of record was filed in the Circuit Court. Wisner (who had had no choice but to sue in the state court) at once moved to remand the case, on the ground that the suit did not raise a controversy within the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, and that as it appeared on the face of the record that plaintiff was a citizen and resident of Michigan, and defendant a citizen and resident of Louisiana, the case was not one within the original jurisdiction of the Circuit Court, in accordance with the statute providing that where jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the action is between citizens of different States, suit shall be brought *333 only in the district of the residence of either the plaintiff or the defendant. The motion to remand was denied, and Wisner applied to this court for a writ of mandamus which was subsequently awarded.
In the present case the removal was granted and sustained on the ground that there was a controversy between the removing defendant and plaintiff, which could be fully determined as between them without the presence of the other defendants. That being so, the suit might have been brought originally in the Circuit Court against the railroad company as sole defendant.
If the ruling of the Circuit Court was erroneous, as is contended, but which we do not intimate, it may be reviewed after final decree on appeal or error. Missouri Pacific Railway Company v. Fitzgerald, 160 U.S. 556, 582.
Rule discharged; petition dismissed.