Thomas v. Great Northern Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 20 June 1906
• Docket Number: 1,293.
• Parties: THOMAS v. GREAT NORTHERN RY. CO. et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit

147 F. 83

THOMAS v. GREAT NORTHERN RY. CO. et al.

No. 1,293.

United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.

June 20, 1906

F. W Dewart, for plaintiff in error.

M. J Gordon, Charles A. Murray, and W. W. Hindman, for defendants in error.

Before GILBERT and ROSS, Circuit Judges, and HAWLEY, District Judge.

GILBERT Circuit Judge, after stating the case as above, .

It is assigned as error, among other assignments, that the Circuit Court overruled the motion of the plaintiff in error to remand the cause to the state court. In Alabama Great Southern Railway Co. v. Thompson, Admr. (Jan. 2, 1906) 200 U.S. 206, 26 Sup.Ct. 161, 50 L.Ed., 441, the Supreme Court reviewed its former decisions, expressed the purport of their meaning, and finally determined the doctrine that the case made in the complaint against defendants sued jointly is, in the absence of a showing of fraudulent misjoinder determinative of the right of removal. The court first reviewed Chesapeake & Ohio R.R. Co. v. Dixon, 179 U.S. 131, 21 Sup.Ct. 67, 45 L.Ed. 121; and, after quoting therefrom, said:

'It is patent from the language just quoted from the opinion that, conceding the misjoinder of causes of action appeared on the face of the petition, the fact was not decisive of the right of the nonresident defendant to remove the action to the federal court.'

From that decision the court quoted with approval the following:

'It has often been decided that an action brought in a state court against two jointly for a tort cannot be removed by either of them into the Circuit Court of the United States, under Act March 3, 1875, c. 137, Secs. 2, 18 Stat. 470 (U.S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 509), upon the ground of a separable controversy between the plaintiff and himself, although the defendants have pleaded severally and the plaintiff might have brought an action against either alone.'

And quoting the language in the opinion of the court in Louisville & Nashville Railroad Company v. Ide, 114 U.S. 52, 5 Sup.Ct. 735, 29 L.Ed. 63, in which the Chief Justice had said, 'A defendant has no right to say that an action shall be several which a plaintiff elects to make joint,' the court proceeded to remark:

'The language is used of an action begun in the state court, and it is recognized that the plaintiff may select his own manner of bringing his action and must stand or fall by his election. If he has improperly joined causes of action, he may fall in his suit. The question may be raised by answer and the right of the defendant adjudicated, but the question of removability depends upon the state of the pleading and the record at the time of the application for removal. Wilson v. Oswego Tp., 151 U.S. 56, 66, 14 Sup.Ct. 259, 263, 38 L.Ed. 70. And it has been too frequently decided to be now questioned that the plaintiff may elect his own method of attack, and the case which he makes in his declaration, bill, or complaint, that being the only pleading in the case, is to determine the separable character of the controversy for the purpose of deciding the right of removal.'

Under the decisions of the Supreme Court of the state of Washington, a servant may be joined with the master in an action to recover damages for personal injuries alleged to have resulted from their negligence, whether the negligence of the servant consists in nonfeasance or misfeasance. Lough v. John Davis Co., 30 Wash. 204, 70 P. 491, 59 L.R.A. 802, 94 Am.St.Rep. 848; Howe v. Northern Pacific Ry., 30 Wash. 569, 70 P. 1100, 60 L.R.A. 949. The action in the present case, therefore, was one which could be brought and enforced in the courts of that state. That a federal court in the same jurisdiction might rule differently as to the liability of the servant, where his negligence consisted in nonfeasance, is no ground for removal. In the Alabama Great Southern Railway Company Case the court said:

'The cases are in difference as to whether a common-law action can be sustained against master and servant jointly because of the responsibility of the master for the acts of the servant in prosecuting the master's business. In good faith, so far as appears in the record, the plaintiff sought the determination of his rights in the state court by the filing of a declaration in which he alleged a joint cause of action. Does this become a separable controversy, within the meaning of the act of Congress, because the plaintiff has misconceived his cause of action and had no right to prosecute the defendants jointly? We think, in the light of the adjudications above cited from this court, it does not. Upon the fact of the complaint, the only pleading filed in the case, the action is joint. It may be that the state court will hold it not to be so. It may be, which we are not called upon to decide now, that this court would so determine if the matter shall be presented in a case of which it has jurisdiction. But this does not change the character of the action which the plaintiff has seen fit to bring, nor change an alleged joint cause of action into a separable controversy for the purpose of removal.'

It remains to be considered whether the cause was removable upon the allegations of the petition of the railway company in which it was alleged that McDonald, its codefendant, was not a proper party defe...