State, to Use of Carroll County Com'rs v. Gore

• Decision Date: 17 June 1870
• Parties: STATE, use of THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF CARROLL COUNTY, v. STEPHEN R. GORE, IGNATIUS GORE and others.
• Court: Maryland Court of Appeals

32 Md. 498

STATE, use of THE COUNTY COMMISSIONERS OF CARROLL COUNTY, v. STEPHEN R. GORE, IGNATIUS GORE and others.

Court of Appeals of Maryland

June 17, 1870

Wm. P. Maulsby, Jr., for the appellant.

The appeals were taken at the proper stage of the cases. Griffin vs. Leslie, 20 Md., 15; Negro Jerry vs. Townshend, 2 Md., 275; Wright vs. Hamner, 5 Md., 375.

The same party is not entitled to have a second removal of the same case; the right of removal resides in the party plaintiff or defendant, and not in each of several plaintiffs or defendants. Price vs. State, 8 Gill, 295, 307, 308; Constitution of 1867, Art. 4, sec. 8, and the Act of 1868 ch. 180.

Frederick J. Nelson, for the appellees.

ALVEY J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

These cases having been moved from the Circuit Court for Carroll county, in which they were instituted, to the Circuit Court for Frederick county, on the suggestion of Stephen R. Gore the first-named of the defendants, the right of removal at the instance of the defendants, or any one of them, was exhausted. Either party to the cause has the right of removal, not to be exercised, however, more than once; but the term "party," as employed in the Constitution Article 4, section 8, and the Act of 1868, ch. 180, to regulate and give force to the Constitutional provision, when applied to civil causes, must be taken in a collective and representative sense, where there are more persons than one as plaintiffs or defendants, and, therefore, as there can be no severance, all applications to remove in such cases must be taken as made on behalf of all the persons constituting the party--plaintiffs or defendants, as the case may be. Any other construction would work the greatest inconvenience, if not, in many cases, a total defeat of all trial. For, if there should happen to be more individual defendants to a cause than there are judicial circuits in the State, (a thing of not unfrequent occurrence,) and each defendant had a separate and consecutive right of removal, as is claimed in the present instance, by electing to remove to a different circuit from that in which the cause might be at the time depending, as could be done, it is easily seen how justice could be defeated, and the whole judicial power of the State put at defiance, by such a device. Certainly, the framers of the Constitution never contemplated a construction of the clause in regard to removal of causes that c...