Credits Commutation Co. v. United States

• Decision Date: 07 December 1898
• Docket Number: 995-997.
• Parties: CREDITS COMMUTATION CO. et al. v. UNITED STATES et al. SAME v. DEXTER et al. SAME v. AMES et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Eighth Circuit

91 F. 570

CREDITS COMMUTATION CO. et al. v. UNITED STATES et al. SAME v. DEXTER et al. SAME v. AMES et al.

Nos. 995-997.

United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.

December 7, 1898

Appeals from the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska.

Winslow S. Pierce and G. M. Lambertson (Lawrence Greer, on the brief), for the motion.

John C Coombs and Henry J. Taylor, opposed.

Before CALDWELL and THAYER, Circuit Judges.

PER CURIAM.

These cases are before the court on the present occasion on motions to dismiss the several appeals. The appeals were taken from orders made by the Honorable WALTER H. SANBORN, Circuit Judge, which denied the application of the Credit Commutation Company and the Combination Bridge Company, the appellants for leave to intervene in three suits which were at the time pending in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Nebraska. One of these suits was a bill filed on October 9, 1893, by Oliver Ames, 2d, and Samuel Carr executors of the last will and testament of Frederick L Ames, decreased, and others, against the Union Pacific Railway Company and others, which is commonly termed the 'Stockholders' Suit; the other was a bill which was filed on January 21, 1895, by F. Gordon Dexter and Oliver Ames, 2d, trustees, against the Union Pacific Railway Company and others, for the purpose of foreclosing the first mortgage on the Union Pacific Railway; and the third was a bill filed on January 23, 1897, by the United States against the Union Pacific Railway Company and others, for the purpose of foreclosing its statutory lien upon the property of said railway company. On April 28, 1897, when said cases were about ripe for a final decree, the Credits Commutation Company and the Combination Bridge Company presented an intervening petition to Judge SANBORN, and asked leave to file the same in each of said suits, and thereby become parties thereto. On the presentation of the intervening petition, an order was made requiring all parties in interest in said suits to show cause, on a day specified, why the prayer of the petitioners for leave to intervene should not be granted. On the return day of said order, objections to the filing of said intervening petition having been duly made and considered, it was ordered 'that the prayers of the petitioners for leave to intervene herein be, and the same are hereby, denied, not as a matter of discretion, but because said petitions do not state facts sufficient to show that the petitioners, or either of them, have a legal right to intervene. From this order, which was entered at the same time and in the same form in each of the above cases, the present appeals were taken.

The ground upon which the petitioners below, who are the appellants here, sought leave to intervene in the pending litigation against the Union Pacific Railway Company, was as follows: The Credits Commutation Company alleged that it was entitled, as beneficiary in a deed of assignment, to three-fourths of the capital stock of the Sioux City &amp Northern Railway Company, which was a railroad extending northwardly from Sioux City, Iowa, for a distance of about 100 miles, to a junction with the Great Northern Railroad, in the state of Minnesota; that it was also entitled to all the stock of the Sioux City, O'Neill & Western Railroad, which was a road extending westwardly from Sioux City, Iowa, to O'Neill, Neb., a distance of about 130 miles; that these roads were connected at Sioux City, Iowa, by a bridge across the Missouri river, whose capital stock was all owned by the Credits Commutation Company; that the petitioners proposed to extend the Sioux City, O'Neill & Western Railroad to a junction with the Union Pacific Railroad in the western part of the state of Nebraska; that their ultimate design was to form a line of transportation, by means of the aforesaid railroad and bridge companies, and certain terminal properties in Sioux City which the petitioners then owned, and thereby promote an interchange of traffic between the head of the Great Lakes, at Duluth, and the region of country lying west of the Missouri river, opposite to Sioux City. They further averred in the intervening complaint that, by virtue of various provisions of the act creating the Union Pacific Railway Company and the amendments thereof, particularly by sections 14 and 15 of the act of July 1, 1862 (12 Stat. 489, c. 120), and by section 17 of the act of July 2, 1864 (13 Stat. 356, c. 216), the right was accorded to the petitioners to form a junction with the Union Pacific Railroad nor farther west than the one hundredth meridian of longitude, whenever they should have completed their proposed line of railroad through the states of Iowa or Minnesota to Sioux City, and thence southwestwardly to a point on the main line of the...