Iowa Homestead Co. v. Des Moines Nav. & Railroad Co.
| Decision Date | 01 June 1881 |
| Citation | 8 F. 97 |
| Parties | IOWA HOMESTEAD CO. v. DES MOINES NAVIGATION & RAILROAD CO. and others. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — Southern District of Iowa |
George Crane, for plaintiff.
Wright Gatch & Wright, for defendant Litchfield.
The plaintiff, on the fifth day of January, 1877, filed its bill in the circuit court of Webster county, Iowa, to enforce its claim against said navigation company to a large amount of taxes which it had paid upon certain lands lying in that county, alleging that said taxes had been paid in good faith under color of title, by virtue of a deed received by the plaintiff from the Dubuque & Sioux City Railway Company. The bill, also, in addition to the accounting, sought to have the amount which should be found due charged as a special lien upon the lands, and prayed that the lands should be sold to satisfy the same. Afterwards, to-wit, on the sixteenth day of July, 1877, Edwin C. Litchfield petitioned said court for leave to intervene in the cause, setting up as ground therefor that he was the owner of the lands sought to be subjected to the lien of the taxes, and was therefore interested in the suit.
On the seventeenth of July, 1877, the next day after filing the petition for leave to intervene, the court granted the petition, and thereupon Mr. Litchfield filed his petition and bond to remove the cause to this court, which was accordingly done, and the cause was docketed here August 10, 1877.
At the October term, 1878, the plaintiff appeared in this court and filed its motion to remand, which was overruled.
At the May term, 1879, the plaintiff moved to have the order of November 5, 1878, denying the motion to remand, set aside. This motion was also overruled; Mr. Justice Miller saying however, that if the complainant would dismiss so much of his bill as sought to subject the lands claimed by Litchfield to the taxes, the motion to remand should be sustained. In accordance with the suggestion of the court, the complainant at a subsequent time, dismissed so much of its bill as sought to subject the land to the payment of its claim, and at the same time moved to have the cause remanded. Pending this motion the defendant Litchfield applied for leave to file a cross-bill, which the court granted, and denied the complainant's motion to remand. Litchfield filed his cross-bill making the homestead and navigation companies defendants, and praying that his title to the lands be declared free and clear of any lien as claimed by the homestead
company, and that the homestead company should be enjoined from claiming or in any manner asserting that the taxes paid by said company are a lien upon the lands. The plaintiff in the original bill, also by leave of the court, presents an amendment to his bill dismissing all claims whatever, except for a judgment against the navigation company for the amount of the taxes paid Litchfield; also presents an amendment to his cross-bill, alleging that, by his contract with the navigation company, he assumed all of said navigation company's liability to the complainant for the taxes in question.
LOVE, D.J.
(giving the judgment of the court.) Thus it appears that, after many vicissitudes, this cause is again before us upon a motion to remand. Mr. Justice Miller, in denying a former motion, said that if the plaintiff would dismiss his claim to a lien upon the land, the cause should be remanded. This opinion must have proceeded upon the ground that upon the withdrawal of that claim by the plaintiff there would be no jurisdiction here. It could not have stood upon any other ground whatever, for upon no other ground than a want of jurisdiction could the cause have been remanded by the order of the court without the consent of the defendant Litchfield. The plaintiff accordingly withdrew or dismissed his claim to a lien upon the land. At that moment, according to Mr. Justice Miller's opinion, as we understand it, the jurisdiction failed here and the cause ought to have been remanded. But the defendant Litchfield, at this stage of the case, obtained from the court leave to file a cross-bill, by which he sought to make a new case, showing an interest other than that of defeating the lien asserted by the plaintiff. The writer of this opinion, Judge McCrary concurring, granted the order giving leave to file the cross-bill. We are both now, however, convinced, upon further argument and fuller consideration, that the order granting leave to file the cross-bill ought to have been denied.
In the first place, if Mr. Justice Miller's opinion was correct, there was no jurisdiction after the withdrawal of the plaintiff's claim of lien; and how could there be any further proceeding in the cause without jurisdiction? The only thing to be done was then to remand the cause to the state court. But again the plaintiff dismissed a material part of his claim, upon the opinion and suggestion of the court that it would thereby entitle itself to an order remanding the cause. Having thus, at the suggestion of the court and in accordance with its opinion, abandoned its claim to a lien,-- the only claim that affected the defendant Litchfield,-- it was certainly error for the court to allow Litchfield to set up a wholly new claim against it, and thus defeat its right to have the cause remanded,-- the only consideration upon which it dismissed its claim of lien. Considering the matter, therefore, in the light of Mr. Justice Miller's opinion alone, the court ought to have denied the application for leave to amend and file a cross-bill. The motion to remand ought to have been sustained upon the withdrawal of the claim of lien by the plaintiff; for there was then nothing whatever before the court but a controversy between two citizens of the state of Iowa. But we are of opinion that the same conclusion might be reached by a different course of reasoning. We incline to the opinion that the original motion to remand ought to have been sustained without any conditions whatever. What was the case? Let us assume that a suit was pending in the state court, in which there were two distinct and independent controversies,-- one between two citizens of Iowa, and the other between the plaintiff and a citizen of New York. Litchfield, the citizen of New York, was not a party to the original suit in the state court. No judgment which could have been rendered in that court could have affected him. If he had not voluntarily intervened, any judgment in that forum, affecting his title to the land, could have been questioned by him by an independent bill in equity in this court; but Litchfield did intervene in the state court, as he had a right to do under the state practice, and he thus by his own act brought his rights into question in the state court. Thus arose the double controversy in question. Mr. Litchfield then removed the suit with this dual controversy here, and the question is, was it competent for this court to overrule the motion to remand, and to hear and determine the controversy in the suit between two citizens of Iowa, as well as the controversy between the plaintiff, a citizen of Iowa, and the defendant Litchfield, a citizen of New York:
It is of no avail whatever to say that the defendant navigation company is insolvent, and therefore a mere nominal party, since Litchfield will be compelled to pay any sum that may be adjudged against the land. The plaintiff demands a personal judgment against the navigation company, and a party has a perfect right to judgment against his insolvent debtor, if he chooses to insist upon it. Moreover, a defendant who is insolvent to-day may become quite solvent in the future. Lastly, we have no evidence of the insolvency of the navigation company. It may turn out otherwise upon the proofs. The mere allegation of its insolvency does not establish the fact. If this question of jurisdiction were to be determined by the true construction of the second section of the act of 1875 alone, there might be room for grave doubt. The last clause of that section is as follows:
'And when in any suit mentioned in this section there shall be a controversy which is wholly between citizens of different states, and which can be fully determined as between them, then either one or more of the plaintiffs or defendants actually interested in such controversy may remove said suit into the circuit court of the United States for the proper district.'
But it must be borne in mind that upon every question of federal jurisdiction w...
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