Houston Ry Co v. Shirley
| Decision Date | 14 April 1884 |
| Citation | 28 L.Ed. 455,111 U.S. 358,4 S.Ct. 472 |
| Parties | HOUSTON & T. C. RY. CO. v. SHIRLEY. 1 |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
John G. Winter, for appellants.
J. Hubley Ashton, for appellee.
This is an appeal from an order remanding a cause removed from a state court. The record shows that the suit was begun by Shirley, the appellee, a citizen of Texas, on the sixteenth of July, 1870, in the district court of McLennan county, Texas, against the Waco Tap Railroad Company, a Texas corporation, to recover a balance claimed to be due on a contract for the construction of the railroad of the defendant company. The company answered the petition on the twenty-fifth of November, 1870. Supplemental petitions were filed on the sixteenth and seventeenth of December, 1872, bringing in the Houston & Texas Central Railroad Company, another Texas corporation, as a defendant. The case was tried to a jury on the second of February, 1875, and judgment rendered in favor of Shirley. This judgment was reversed by the supreme court of the state on the twenty-eighth of December, 1875, upon a writ of error brought by the* Waco Tap Company, and on the sixteenth of March, 1877, the cause was remanded to the district court for further proceedings. After the case got back to the district court the petition was several times amended, to the effect that since the commencement of the suit the road, road-bed, franchises, etc., of the Waco Tap Company had been sold to the Houston & Texas Central Company under a deed of trust, and that the Waco Tap Company had become merged in the Houston & Texas Central Company. The Houston & Texas Central and the Waco Tap companies answered this amended petition, and the cause was again tried to a jury and a judgment rendered in favor of Shirley on the twenty-fifth of November, 1878. This judgment also was reversed by the supreme court of the state on the sixteenth of January, 1880, and the cause again remanded to the district court for further proceedings.
A statute of Texas provides that: 'Whenever a sale of the road-bed, track, franchise, and chartered powers and privileges [of a railroad company] is made, * * * the directors or managers of the sold-out company, at the time of the sale, * * * shall be the trustees of the creditors and stockholders of the sold-out company, and shall have full power to settle the affairs of the sold-out company, collect and pay the outstanding debts, and divide among the stockholders the money and property remaining in their hands after the payment of the debts and necessary expenses; and the persons so constituted trustees shall have the authority to sue by the name of the trustees of such sold-out company, and may be sued as such, and shall be jointly and severally responsible to the creditors and stockholders of such company to the extent of the property and effects which shall come into their hands; and no suit pending for or against any railroad company at the time the sale may be made of its road-bed, track, franchise, and chartered privileges shall abate, but the same shall be continued in the name of the trustees of the sold-out company.' Pasch. Dig. 4916.
At the November term, 1881, of the district court, the petition was again amended, and John T. Flint and others, all citizens of Texas, who were directors of the Waco Tap Com- pany at the time of the sale of the road-bed, etc., brought in as defendants. In this last amended petition, Shirley describes himself as at that time a citizen of New...
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