Charles Wedding v. Romanza Jerome Meyler

• Decision Date: 23 February 1904
• Docket Number: No. 125,125
• Citation: 24 S.Ct. 322,192 U.S. 573,48 L.Ed. 570,66 L. R. A. 833
• Parties: CHARLES L. WEDDING and Louis I. Ahlering, Plffs. in Err. , v. ROMANZA JEROME MEYLER
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

192 U.S. 573

24 S.Ct. 322

48 L.Ed. 570

CHARLES L. WEDDING and Louis I. Ahlering, Plffs. in Err.,

v ROMANZA JEROME MEYLER.

No. 125.

Argued January 14, 15, 1904.

Decided February 23, 1904.

Messrs. Merrill Moores, Cassius C. Hadley, and Charles W. Miller for plaintiffs in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 573-578 intentionally omitted] Mr. D. W. Sanders, for defendant in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 578-580 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court:

This is a writ of error to a circuit court of the state of Kentucky on a judgment entered there in pursuance of a mandate of the court of appeals of that state (107 Ky. 310, 53 S. W. 809, 107 Ky. 685, 60 S. W. 20). The action was brought upon an Indiana judgment. The answer denied the jurisdiction of the Indiana court. It was not disputed that the service in that suit was on a steamboat in the Ohio river on the Indiana side. At the trial two questions were left to the jury,—one whether the person purporting to act as the attorney of the defendant in the Indiana suit was authorized to represent him, and the other whether the summons in that suit was served on the Indiana or Kentucky side of the low-water mark of the Ohio river where it touches the Indiana shore. The jury found against the authority of the alleged attorney, and found that the service was on the Kentucky side of the low-water mark, and therefore, it is assumed, within the boundaries of Kentucky. Thereupon the plaintiffs in error (the original plaintiffs) moved for judgment notwithstanding the findings of the jury, and judgment was ordered. The defendant excepted and appealed. The court of appeals sustained the exceptions and ordered a judgment on the verdict dismissing the action. A judgment was entered, as ordered, in the court below,—the above mentioned circuit court,—and this writ of error was brought.

It is suggested that the writ of error should have been directed to the court of appeals. But it appears from the form of the order of that court that the record remained in the lower court, where judgment was ordered to be entered, and the writ properly ran to the court where the judgment had to be rendered. Rothschild v. Knight, 184 U. S. 334, 46 L. ed. 573, 22 Sup. Ct. Rep. 391. It is suggested further, that the record does not show a Federal question. But the jurisdiction of the Indiana court was put in issue by the pleadings and it is apparent from what has been said that the decision went on a denial of that jurisdiction because of the place of service. That denial could be justified only on the ground that the compact of Virginia and the act of Congress of February 4, 1791 [1 Stat. at L. 189, chap. 4] admitting Kentucky to the Union, did not confer the right of jurisdiction which the Indiana court attempted to exercise and which the state of Indiana claims. The judgment and the opinion of the court of appeals both disclose that the decision was against the right under the statutes referred to, and that it was on that ground only that the Indiana judgment was denied any force or effect. The question as to the right of jurisdiction sufficiently appears. pears. San Jose Land & Water Co. v. San Jose Ranche Co. 189 U. S. 177, 180, 47 L. ed. 765, 768, 23 Sup. Ct. Rep. 487. It is not denied that that question is one which can be taken to this court. Pennsylvania v. Wheeling & B. Bridge Co. 13 How. 518, 566, 14 L. ed. 249, 269.

We pass to the question decided by the court of appeals. In 1789 the state of Virginia passed a statute known as the Virginia compact. This statute proposed the erection of the district of Kentucky into an independent state upon certain conditions. One of these was: § 11. 'Seventh, that the use and navigation of the river Ohio, so far as the territory of the proposed state, or the territory which shall remain within the limits of this commonwealth, lies thereon, shall be free and common to the citizens of the United States, and the respective jurisdictions of this commonweath and of the proposed state on the river as aforesaid shall be concurrent only with the states which may possess the opposite shores of the said river.' 13 Hening, St. at L. 17. (The previous cession by Virginia of its rights in the territory northwest of the Ohio had been on condition that the territory so ceded should be laid out and formed into states. Act of December 20, 1783, 11 Hening, St. at L. 326.) The act of Congress of February 4, 1791, chap. 4, 1 Stat. at L. 189, consents and enacts that the 'district of Kentucky, within the jurisdiction of the said commonwealth' of Virginia, shall be formed into a new state, and admitted into the Union. As a preliminary it recites the consent of the Virginia legislature by the above act of 1789.

Under article 4, § 3, of the Constitution, a new state could not be formed in this way within the jurisdiction of Virginia, within which Kentucky was recognized as being by the words last quoted, without the consent of the legislature of Virginia as well as of Congress. The need of such consent also was recognized by the recital in the act of Congress. But as the consent given by Virginia was conditioned upon the jurisdiction of Kentucky on the Ohio river being concurrent only with the states to be formed on the other side, Congress necessarily assented to and adopted this condition when it assented to the act in which it was contained. Green v. Biddle, 8 Wheat. 1, 87, 5 L. ed. 547, 569. Thus, after the passage of the two acts, it stood absolutely enacted by the powers which between them had absolute sovereignty over all the territory concerned, that when states should be formed on the opposite shores of the river they should have concurrent jurisdiction on the river with Kentucky. 'This compact, by the sanction of Congress, has become a law of the Union. What further legislation can be desired for judicial action?' Pennsylvania v. Wheeling & B. Bridge Co. 13 How. 518, 566, 14 L. ed. 249, 269.

It hardly is necessary to be curious or technical when dealing with law-making power, in inquiring precisely what legal conceptions shall be invoked in order to bring to pass what the legislature enacts. If the law-making power says that a matter with in its competence shall be so, so it will be, so far as legal theory is concerned, without regard to the elegantia juris, or whether it fits that theory or not. But there is no trouble in giving the subsequently formed states the benefit of this legislation. In the case of Kentucky the 'compact' which the Virginia statute has been treated by this court as creating (Green v. Biddle, 8 Wheat. 1, 16, 90, 92, 5 L. ed. 547, 551, 569) may be regarded as having been, in the first stage, not only a law but a continuing offer to the expected new state when it should come into being, which was accepted by that state when it came into being on the terms prescribed. And so as to the new states to be formed thereafter on the other side...