Chicago Co v. Wiggins Ferry Co

• Decision Date: 29 January 1883
• Citation: 108 U.S. 18,1 S.Ct. 614,27 L.Ed. 636
• Parties: CHICAGO & A. R. CO. v. WIGGINS FERRY CO
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

108 U.S. 18

1 S.Ct. 614

27 L.Ed. 636

CHICAGO & A. R. CO. v. WIGGINS FERRY CO.

January 29, 1883.

This is a suit begun in a state court of Missouri by the Wiggins Ferry Company, an Illinois corporation, against the Chicago & Alton Railroad Company, another Illinois corporation, to recover damages for the breach of a contract by which, as is alleged, the railroad company bound itself not to employ any other means than the ferry company's ferry for the transportation of passengers and freight, coming and going on its railroad, across the Mississippi at St. Louis. The railroad company defends on the ground, among others, that if the agreement actually entered into by the parties contains by construction any such provision as is claimed, it is in violation of the laws of Illinois, and in excess of the corporate powers of the company as an Illinois corporation. To avoid the effect of this defense the ferry company sets up, by way of estoppel, a judgment in another suit in a state court of Missouri, between the same parties, where precisely the same question was raised on the same contract, and in which it was decided that the railroad company did have the corporate authority under the laws of Illinois to make the contract. As soon as the pleadings in the case developed this issue, the railroad company petitioned for the removal of the suit to the circuit court of the United States for the eastern district of Missouri, the proper district, on the ground that 'full faith and credit has not been given to the public acts of the state of Illinois by the supreme court of the state of Missouri in the adjudication aforesaid, and that by reason of the facts herein set forth, and of such adjudication, and the pleading thereof as an estoppel, in the manner set forth in the plaintiff's amended petition, this suit is one arising under the constitution and laws of the United States.' The facts set forth in the petition were the charter and laws of Illinois, which governed the powers of the railroad company as an Illinois corporation.

The state court, on the filing of the petition for removal, accompanied by the necessary bond, stopped proceedings, but the circuit court, when the record was entered there, remanded the cause.^* From an order to that effect this writ of error has been taken, and is now for hearing on the merits under the operation of rule 32, adopted at the last term, with a view to facilitating the final determination of questions of removal under the act of March 3, 1875, c. 137, (1 Supp. Rev. St. 173.)

Chester H. Krum and

C. Beckwith, for plaintiff in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 20-22 intentionally omitted] S. T. Glover and J. R. Shepley, for defendant in error.

WAITE, C. J.

In our opinion this is not a suit arising under the constitution or laws of the United States, within the meaning of that term as used in the removal act. If the courts of Missouri gave a wrong construction to the laws of Illinois in the that error cannot be corrected by means of a transfer of this suit from the state court to the circuit court of the United States. So long as the judgment stands, it cannot be impeached collaterally in the courts of the United States, any more than in those of the state, by showing that if due effect had been given to the laws it...