209 F. 880 | E.D. Tenn. | 1913
This is a suit brought by the plaintiff, a citizen of Tennessee, against the defendant, a New Jersey corporation, to recover ten thousand dollars damages for personal injuries alleged to have been received by. the plaintiff while employed in the defendant’s copper mines in Polk County, Tennessee, within the Southern Division of the Eastern District of Tennessee. The summons was served on the highest official of the defendant to be found within this district. The defendant has filed a plea to the jurisdiction of the court over this cause, alleging that the plaintiff is a citizen and resident of Knox County, Tennessee, in'the Northern Division of this District, and not a citizen or inhabitant of the Southern Division of
“Where the jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the action is between citizens of different States, suit shall be brought in the district of the residence of either the plaintiff or the defendant.”
See: In re Keasby & Mattison Co., 160 U. S. 221, 228, 16 Sup. Ct. 273, 40 L. Ed. 402.
3. The jurisdiction of this cause in the Southern Division of the Eastern District of Tennessee is not taken away, even if the plaintiff be a resident of the Northern Division of the district, by the provision of section 53 of the Judicial Code, that:
“When a district contains more than one division, every suit not of a local nature against a single defendant must be brought in the division where he resides.”
This provision is clearly limited, in my opinion, to cases in which the suit is brought in the district in which the defendant resides, to which alone its terms can possibly apply, and has no application whatever as a limitation upon local jurisdiction when the suit is not brought in the district in which the defendant resides, but is brought, under the provisions of section 51 above quoted, in the district in which the plaintiff resides. And as the Code contains no limitation upon the right of the plaintiff to bring such suit against the defendant, where diversity of citizenship exists, in the district in which the plaintiff resides, without reference to the particular division of the plaintiff’s residence, I think it clear that the plaintiff may, in such case, bring his suit against the defendant in any division of the district in which the plaintiff is a resident in which the defendant may be found and served with process. This is in direct analogy to the cases holding that as the requirement that suits based upon diversity of citizenship alone shall be brought within a district in which either the plaintiff or the defendant resides, have no application to suits brought against aliens, an alien may be sued, if jurisdiction otherwise exists, in the Federal Court of any district in which valid service may be had upon the defendant. In re Hohorst, 150 U. S. 653, 14 Sup. Ct. 221, 37 L. Ed. 1211; Barrow Steamship Co. v. Kane, 170 U. S. 100, 18 Sup. Ct. 526, 42 L. Ed. 964; Ladew v. Copper Co. (C. C.) 179 Fed. 245, 253.
An order will accordingly be entered sustaining the plaintiff’s demurrer to the defendant’s plea to the jurisdiction.