Turner v. Farmers Loan Trust Co

Citation106 U.S. 552,27 L.Ed. 273,1 S.Ct. 519
PartiesTURNER and another v. FARMERS' LOAN & TRUST CO. and others
Decision Date15 January 1883
CourtUnited States Supreme Court

N. A. Cowdry and Geo. W. Kretzinger, for appellants.

Jas. D. Campbell, for appellees.

HARLAN, J.

This suit was commenced on the twenty-first day of November, 1874, in the circuit court for De Witt county, Illinois, by Malcolm C. Turner, James Turner, and others, constituting the firm of Turner Bros., against the Indianapolis, Bloomington & Western Railway Company, the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company, and others. The complainants, suing in behalf of themselves and all other bondholders and creditors of the railway company, asked a decree for the foreclosure of several mortgages, covering as well its property and franchises as the road and franchises of the constituent companies, by whose consolidation it was created. The Farmers' Loan & Trust Company appeared and answered. It also filed a cross-bill, making all necessary parties defendant thereto; and, as trustee in some of the mortgages creating prior liens upon the main line of the consolidated road, it prayed for a decree of foreclosure, a sale of the mortgaged property, and a proper distribution of the proceeds arising therefrom among the several classes of creditors of the railway company. Subsequently, on the twenty-sixth of April, 1876, it filed a petition, accompanied by a sufficient bond, for the removal of the suit into the circuit court of the United States for the southern district of Illinois; and thereafter, it is asserted, the state court proceeded no further. A transcript of the proceedings having been filed in the circuit court of the United States, a motion was there made to remand the cause, while the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company moved that the court take jurisdiction. By an order entered on the nineteenth day of July, 1876, the former motion was denied and the latter sustained.

On the eighteenth day of July, 1877, a final decree was passed, ascertaining the amounts due and unpaid on the mortgages to the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company. By that decree it was ordered and adjudged that the railway company, within 20 days thereafter, pay the trustee the amount so ascertained, ($6,234,625,) with interest from the date of the decree; that in default of such payment the equity of all the defendants to the cross-bill, in the mortgaged property, be forever barred and foreclosed, and the property—which included all the rights, effects, and franchises of the consolidated company, and of its constituent companies, as to the main line of road—be sold as an entirety, the same being, in the opinion and judgment of the court, incapable of sale separately or in division without material injury to its value. It was further decreed that the mortgaged property be sold without appraisement and without reference, and not subject to any law of Illinois or Indiana, conferring the right of redemption from mortgage sales. On the eighth day of May, 1878, the original decree was amended by way of further direction for its execution. The sale occurred on the thirtieth day of October, 1878, was reported to court on the succeeding day, and on the first day of November, 1878, exceptions thereto were filed by James Turner and the railway company. On the twenty-third of December, 1878, the exceptions were overruled, and an order entered confirming and approving the sale in all respects. On the third day of February, 1879, Turner and the railway company filed their joint petition, praying an appeal from the final order confirming the sale. The appear was allowed, and the bond tendered was approved, not to operate as a supersedeas. Subsequently the purchaser received a deed and took possession of the property under the direction of the court. It may be stated that a similar decree was entered in the circuit court of the United States for the district of Indiana, in a suit pending therein between, substantially, the same parties and relating to the same property. That suit was commenced on the eighteenth day of November, 1874, in the circuit court for Montgomery county, Indiana, and thence removed into the federal court upon the petition of the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company.

Notwithstanding the record is very voluminous, it is believed that this statement is sufficient to indicate the grounds upon which this court rests its determination of the case.

Numerous errors have been assigned in behalf of the appellants, James Turner and the Indianapolis, Bloomington & Western Railway Company. The first and most important one relates to the jurisdiction of the circuit court of the United States. Their contention is that under the act of March 3, 1875, the state court could not have been deprived of jurisdiction to proceed, unless the petition for removal was filed 'before or at the term at which such cause could be first tried and before the trial thereof;' that the petition of the Farmers' Loan & Trust Company was not so filed; consequently, it is insisted, jurisdiction in the federal court could not have attached. It is further argued that the pleadings disclose the fact that there was no such controversy in this suit, between citizens of different states, as would authorize its removal from the state court under the act of March 3, 1875, or under that of March 2, 1867, even if the latter is in force for any purpose.

Without admitting the soundness of these propositions, we are of opinion that the questions of jurisdiction now raised cannot be determined upon an appeal merely from the order confirming the report of sale. Whether the suit was one which the Farmers' Loan & Trust...

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  • Craswell v. Belanger
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    • U.S. Court of Appeals — Ninth Circuit
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    ...appeals to review interlocutory orders, which have been made appealable to those courts and not to the supreme court. In Turner v. Trust Co., 106 U.S. 552, 1 Sup.Ct. 519, the appeal was 'only from the order confirming sale,' which had been made in pursuance of a decree of foreclosure, the a......
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    ...in the circuit court, although the point has not been formally raised in that court or in this court, in Turner v. Trust Co., 106 U. S. 552, 555, 1 Sup. Ct. Rep. 519; Railroad Co. v. Swan, 111 U.S. 379, 386, 4 Sup. Ct. Rep. 510; Farmington v. Pillsbury, 114 U. S. 138, 144, 5 Sup. Ct. Rep. 8......
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