Cleve Van Dyke v. Cordova Copper Company

• Decision Date: 08 June 1914
• Docket Number: No. 735,735
• Citation: 234 U.S. 188,58 L.Ed. 1273,34 S.Ct. 884
• Parties: CLEVE W. VAN DYKE, Plff. in Err., v. CORDOVA COPPER COMPANY
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

234 U.S. 188

34 S.Ct. 884

58 L.Ed. 1273

CLEVE W. VAN DYKE, Plff. in Err.,

v CORDOVA COPPER COMPANY.

No. 735.

Submitted May 11, 1914.

Decided June 8, 1914.

Messrs. Richard E. Sloan and James Westervelt for plaintiff in error.

Messrs. John H. Campbell, W. J. Hughes, and Karl W. Kirchwey for defendant in error.

Memorandum opinion by Mr. Chief Justice White, by direction of the Court:

This action was brought on December 2, 1911, by the Cordova Copper Company in the 'district court of the fifth judicial district of the territory of Arizona in and for the county of Gila' to recover sums of money alleged to have been loaned to Van Dyke, the plaintiff in error, and remaining unpaid. The case was tried in April and May, 1912, after the admission of Arizona as a state, in the 'superior court of Gila county, state of Arizona,' and resulted in a verdict on May 4 for $15,364.75, upon which judgment was entered on the same day. On May 16, Van Dyke moved for a new trial, which motion was, at the instance of the company, stricken from the files. An appeal was taken to the supreme court of the state. The court, deciding that the appeal was taken alone from the judgment, and that there was no reversible error in the judgment roll, held that it could not review errors which were alone susceptible of being reviewed upon an appeal from an order refusing a new trial, although treating the motion to strike out as equivalent to such refusal, and the judgment was consequently affirmed. This writ of error was then prosecuted, and the case is before us on a motion to dismiss.

Neither in the assignments of error nor in the argument at bar is it asserted that Federal rights were raised or involved in the court below, but the assertion that the case is within our jurisdiction rests solely upon the provisions of §§ 32 and 33 of the Arizona enabling act of June 20 1910 (36 Stat. at L. pp. 557, 576, 577, chap. 310). The sections in question, generally speaking, provide for the trial of cases pending at the time of admission to statehood, and for their transfer to the appropriate courts established under the new system, and the particular language upon which the controversy turns is this:

'. . . and that from all judgments and decrees or other determinations of any court of the said territory, in any case begun prior to admission, the parties to such cause shall have the same right to prosecute appeals, writs of error, and petitions for review to the Supreme Court of the United States or to the circuit court of appeals as they would have had by law prior to the admission of said state into the Union.'

The contention is that as this case was 'begun prior to admission,' and is one which, in consequence of the amount involved, might have been brought...