Dougherty v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co.

122 F. 205, 58 C.C.A. 651, 1903 U.S. App. LEXIS 4750
Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit·Decided March 31, 1903·No. No. 1,149·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

McCORMICK, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). The first error assigned is the overruling and denying plaintiff’s motion to remand this suit. Counsel for the Pullman Company urge that the jurisdiction of the Circuit Court in this case can be safely rested on the diversity of citizenship alone, and that the petition for removal need not have contained the additional averment that there was a separable controversy. In reference, however, to the averment of a separable controversy in the suit, they urge that the sufficiency of the roadbed and the proper handling of the train are matters of defense with which the Pullman Company has no concern, and, moreover, that, not being a common carrier, it is under no duty to exercise the same high degree of care'required of the railroad company; that the complaint involves quite different lines of defense on the part of the two defendants.

As to these contentions:

Counsel for the plaintiff in error relies with well-placed confidence on the cases of Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company v. Martin, 178 U. S. 245, 20 Sup. Ct. 854, 44 L. Ed. 1055, and Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Company v. Dixon, 179 U. S. 131, 21 Sup. Ct. 67, 45 L. Ed. 121. In the first of these cases it appears that Lissa Martin, as administratrix of William Martin, deceased, brought her action for damages against the Chicago, Rock Island & Pacific Railway Company, and against Clark and others, receivers of the Union Pacific Railway Company, in the state court in Kansas. The receivers presented their petition and bond, praying for removal of the cause to the United States Circuit Court on the ground that the case arose under the Constitution and laws of the United States. Their application was overruled. The case was tried. Judgment was rendered in favor of the plaintiff against all of the defendants. This judgment was affirmed on writ of error by the Supreme Court of Kansas. 59 Kan. 437, 53 Pac. 461. The refusal of the state court to remove the cause to the Circuit Court on the application of the receivers was relied on as error throughout the proceedings; and the Supreme Court of Kansas held that the application for removal was properly denied, because all of the defendants were charged with jointly causing the death of plaintiff’s intestate, and all did not join in the petition for removal. The case was brought by writ of error to the United States Supreme Court. In delivering the opinion of that court, the Chief Justice, after reciting the language of the act of August 13, 1888, 25 Stat. 433, c. 866 [U. S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 509], bearing upon the subject, says:

“It thus appears on the face of the statute that if a suit arises under the ■Constitution or laws of the United States, or if it is a suit between citizens of different states, the defendant, if there be but one, may remove, or the defendants, if there be more than one; but where the suit is between citizens of different states, and there is a separable controversy, then either one or •more of the defendants may remove.
[208] “Under the first clause of section 2 of the act of 1875 (18 Stat. 470, c. 137), which applied to ‘either party,’ but in its re-enactment in the second clause of section 2 of the act of 1887 [24 Stat. 552, c. 373], above quoted, is confined to the defendant or defendants, it was well settled that a removal could not be effected unless all the parties on the same side of the controversy united in the petition; and so as to the second clause of the second section of the act of 1875, which corresponds with the third clause of the second section of the act of 1887, it was held that that clause only applied where there were two or more controversies in the same suit, one of which was wholly between citizens of different states. Hanrick v. Hanrick, 153 U. S. 192 [14 Sup. Ct. 835, 38 L. Ed. 685], and cases cited; Torrence v. Shedd, 144 U. S. 527 [12 Sup. Ct. 726, 36 L. Ed. 528], and eases cited. In the latter case Justice Gray said: ‘As this court has repeatedly affirmed, not only in cases of joint contracts, but in actions for torts, which might have been brought against all or against any one of the defendants, separate answers by the several defendants sued on joint causes of action may present different questions for determination, but they do not necessarily divide the suit into separate controversies. A defendant has no right to say that an action shall be several which a plaintiff elects to make joint. A separate defense may defeat a joint recovery, but it cannot deprive a plaintiff of his right to prosecute his own suit to final determination in his own way. The cause of action is the subject-matter of the controversy, and that is, for all the purposes of the suit, whatever the plaintiff declares it to be in his pleadings.’ ”

In the concluding paragraph of the opinion, the Chief Justice says:

“Whatever the rights of the receivers to remove the cause if they had been sued alone, the controversy was not a separable controversy, within the intent and meaning of the act. This being so, the case came solely within the first clause of the section, and we are of the opinion that it was not intended by Congress that under such circumstances there should be any difference between the rule applied under the first and the second clauses of section 2 of the act of 1887-88.”

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Dougherty v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co., 122 F. 205, 58 C.C.A. 651, 1903 U.S. App. LEXIS 4750 (5th Cir. 1903).

122 F. 205 (Dougherty v. Yazoo & M. V. R. Co.) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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