Old Colony Trust Co. v. Atlanta Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 06 January 1899
• Docket Number: 1,061.
• Citation: 100 F. 798
• Court: U.S. District Court — Northern District of Georgia
• Parties: OLD COLONY TRUST CO. v. ATLANTA RY. CO. et al.

100 F. 798

OLD COLONY TRUST CO. v. ATLANTA RY. CO. et al.

No. 1,061.

United States Circuit Court, N.D. Georgia.

January 6, 1899

To a suit by a mortgagee of a street-railroad company to enjoin another street-railroad company from condemning the right to use a portion of the mortgagor's track, the mortgagor company is an indispensable party, and, as its interests necessarily range it on the side of the complainant, it will be so placed by the court for jurisdictional purposes although it is made a defendant by the pleadings; and, where it is a corporation of the same state as its co-defendant, a federal court is without jurisdiction on the ground of diversity of citizenship. ^[1]

N. J. &amp T. A. Hammond, for Old Colony Trust Co.

Goodwin Westmoreland & Hallman, for Atlanta Consol. St. Ry. Co.

King &amp Spalding, for Atlanta Ry. Co.

NEWMAN District Judge (orally).

In this case my opinion is so well settled, and my convictions are so positive, on one phrase of it, that, in view of the public interests involved, it will not be well for me to delay the case by taking the papers and going further into it. It will be unnecessary, because there is no probability of any change in my views. Under the act of 1875, as adopted by the act of 1887 and 1888, the court was required for itself notwithstanding the arbitrary arrangement of the parties by the pleader in suits brought in this court, to rearrange the parties as to their respective interests, and to fix them on the side of the controversy on which they belong. If all of the parties in this arrangement on one side are not citizens of different states from all the parties on the other side, the jurisdiction fails. This suit is brought by the Old Colony Trust Company against the Atlanta Railway Company and the Consolidated Street-Railway Company to enjoin the former company from enforcing a right which it says it obtained by an ordinance of the city to condemn a certain portion of the track of the Consolidated Street-Railway Company, which the city had authorized it under a certain reservation to do; that is, to allow the new company to use a certain part of the track of the old company under certain circumstances. The bill seeks to prevent the new company from proceeding to condemn the track of the old company,-- to obtain the right to use it. Now, upon the filing of the bill against the two street-railway companies, the Consolidated Street-Railway Company came into court by cross bill, but adopted all of the allegations of the bill of the Old Colony Trust Company, and arranged itself by all the pleadings on the side of the litigation with the trust company. The pleadings put it there necessarily; its interests are there very clearly; the whole countenance of the case puts the Consolidated Street-Railway Company on the same side with the trust company in this litigation, as to the right of the Atlanta Railway Company (the new company) to use the part of the Consolidated's tracks in question. So I think there can be no question here that it is not...