93 F. 525 | U.S. Circuit Court for the District of Northern Ohio | 1899
This is a motion to remand. The suit was filed in the common pleas court of Lucas county against receivers managing a railroad under orders of this court, to recover damages' in the sum of §1,995 for negligence in their operation of the road, resulting in plaintiff’s injury. By virtue of section 3 of the jurisdiction act of August 13,1888, suits of this character may be brought against such receivers without previous leave of the court. It is conceded by the counsel for (he plaintiff that such a suit is one arising under the constitution and laws of the United states, and the concession is based on a number of cases. Railway Co. v. Cox, 145 U. S. 593, 12 Sup. Ct. 905; Tennessee v. Union & Planters’ Bank, 152 U. S. 454, 463, 14 Sup. Ct. 654; Rouse v. Hornsby, 161 U. S. 588, 16 Sup. Ct. 610; Central Trust Co. v. East Tennessee, V. & G. Ry. Co., 59 Fed. 523; Landers v. Felton, 73 Fed. 311; Board v. Peirce, 90 Fed. 764. By the first section of the act of 1888, circuit courts of the United States are given original jurisdiction of such suits when the amount in controversy exceeds, exclusive of interest and costs, $2,000. By the second section of the same act, suits of which, by the first section, the federal circuit courts have original jurisdiction, may, when brought in a slate court, be removed to the proper federal circuit court. The amount involved in the suit before the court, exclusive of interest and costs, is but $1,995. This court would not, therefore, have original jurisdiction of it under the first section of the act of 1888, and, as a necessary consequence, it. could not, if brought in a state court, be removed, under the second section of the act, to this court. Tod v. Railway Company, 65 Fed. 145.
It is said, however, 'that a suit against a receiver is ancillary to the suit in which the receiver is appointed, and therefore that,' if it is brought in a stale court, it may be removed to the federal court in which the principal suit is pending. The power of one court to stop proceedings in a suit lawfully begun and pending in another, and to take such suit within its own jurisdiction for further hearing and final disposition, is the exercise of an unusual and high prerogative, and must be based on clear statutory authority. Such a power is not to be presumed or implied. There is no language in any removal statute which justifies removal of a cause from a state court to a federal court: on the ground that it is ancillary to a suit in a federal court. On the contrary, the removals under the second section of the act of 1888,
Much reliance is placed by counsel and by the courts upholding the right to remove suits like the case at bar upon White v. Ewing, 159 U. S. 36, 15 Sup. Ct. 1018. That was not a removal case. The question certified, and answered in that case was whether a federal court of equity might authorize its receiver, appointed upon a creditors’ bill to collect and distribute the assets of an Insolvent corporation, to bring suits in the course of his administration in the same court against debtors of the corporation for sums less than $2,000. The question was answered in the affirmative on the ground that such suits were merely ancillary to the main cause, and were in furtherance of, and therefore within the original jurisdiction obtained by the court in, the principal cause under the statutes and constitution of the United States. But there is nothing in the opinion of Mr. Justice Brown in that case, and nothing in the scope of the question and answer, justifying the inference that a suit begun in the state court by or against a receiver for less than $2,000 could be removed to the federal court either under the statute or by virtue of any implied power of removal vested in federal courts of equity for the purpose of protecting and perfecting the exercise of their original jurisdiction.
Section 3 of the act of 1888 was enacted to save expense to those suing receivers. It secured to them the right to choose their own court, except as this might be modified by the removal statutes. To hold that the right of removal in all such cases is implied, is to defeat the chief purpose of congress, which was the reduction of the cost of litigation to the smaller claimants. Section 3, it will be conceded, has prevented federal courts of equity from drawing to themselves jurisdiction of suits against their receivers by injunction and process of contempt. Central Trust Co. v. East Tennessee, V. & G. Ry. Co., 59 Fed. 523. It would certainly be a strange anomaly if the intention of congress could be defeated by now implying a power of removal as a means of bringing about the same result.
The foregoing considerations lead me necessarily to the conclusion that suits against receivers of a federal court of equity cannot be removed from a slate court unless the amount in controversy exceeds $2,000, exclusive of interest and costs. The point under consideration has been four times before circuit courts of the United States, — before Judge Hanford in Carpenter v. Railroad Co., 75 Fed. 850, before Judge Baker in Ray v. Peirce, 81 Fed. 881, before Judge Phillips in Sullivan