- Bookmark
- Share
- CaseIQ
MASON CITY R.R. CO. v. BOYNTON
Mr. Thomas D. Healy, with whom Mr. A.G. Briggs, Mr. John L. Erdall, Mr. M.F. Healy and Mr. Robert Healy were on the brief, for Mason City and Fort Dodge Railroad Company:
The landowner was plaintiff within the meaning of the removal statute, when the suit was removed into the Circuit Court.
The corporation seeking to condemn real estate is in fact the defendant, and occupies a position analogous to that of a defendant in a case brought to recover the value of real estate which has been appropriated. This is the case where there is nothing left to contest but the value of the real estate taken.
When the case was transferred to the District Court by appealing from the award of the commissioners, it took, under the statutes of the State, the form of a suit at law, and was thenceforth subject to its ordinary rules and incidents. No other question was open to contest in the state District Court. Turner v. Holeran, 11 Minn. 253; Mississippi Boom Company v. Patterson, 98 U.S. 403; Meyers v. C. N.W., 118 Iowa 312; §§ 1999, 2009, 2010, 2011 of the Code (1897) of Iowa.
Mr. Benjamin I. Salinger, for Boynton:
Within the meaning of the removal act, this land-owner was not a plaintiff, and no case holds that he is except Myers v. Railway, 118 Iowa 312, and Kirby v. Railway, 106 F. 552.
The non-resident landowner may remove before he appeals to the state court from award made. Railway v. Day, 54 F. 545; Traction Co. v. Mining Co., 196 U.S. 249.
While state laws, and decisions by state courts of last resort, may, as to litigants who remain in the courts of the State, settle, arbitrarily, who is plaintiff, neither a legislature nor such courts may, directly or indirectly, abridge the right to remove to the Federal court in a case of which that court has original, concurrent jurisdiction. Hess v. Reynolds, 113 U.S. 73; Myers v. Railway, 118 Iowa 312, 321; Terminal Co. v. Ry., 119 F. 209; Searle v. District, 124 U.S. 197; Traction Co. v. Mining Co., 196 U.S. 249; Reagan v. Loan Co., 154 U.S. 391.
What is removable in one State must be so in every other; and a State may not vary the standard of removability by making proceedings which affect the property rights of a non-resident unlike what suits usually are. Cases supra.
While the Federal courts will, in such cases as plaintiff in error cites, follow the decisions of the highest state courts, even where the soundness of such decisions is not approved, this rule does not apply to state decisions that directly or indirectly tend to abridge the jurisdiction of the Federal courts. Cases supra.
While it has been settled that certain instances of seeking to increase an award are equivalent to beginning suit to obtain pay for land appropriated, this does not necessarily settle that every non-resident landowner who appeals from a condemnation award is a plaintiff within the meaning of the removal act, and the cases that so defined the beginning of suit did not, and had no occasion to, hold that such owner was such plaintiff.
If it may be claimed that some of the cases so defining the beginning of suit do hold that the appealing landowner was a plaintiff, they do so on the theory that his appeal could not and did not present anything but the question of compensation.
Under the statutes of Iowa such appeal could also present whether conditions existed which, under such statutes warranted condemnation proceedings. Terminal Co. v. Railway Co., 19 F. 209.
Under those statutes the condemnation at bar was sufficiently a judicial proceeding to make the one who instituted it, rather than the owner who appealed from the award, the plaintiff. Traction Co. v. Mining Co., 196 U.S. 241; Boom Co. v. Patterson, 98 U.S. 404; Searle v. District, 124 U.S. 199, 200.
Had the Iowa statutes done less than to make the proceedings on condemnation sufficiently judicial to allow a hearing on whether the right to condemn existed, and confined them to the mere right to have compensation ascertained, there would have been a denial of due process of law. Traction Co. v. Mining Co., 196 U.S. 251, 252.
While consent cannot give jurisdiction, if one party assert the facts necessary to jurisdiction and they are not put in issue, and if a court competent to try the question whether jurisdiction exists, decides that it does, it is an adjudication that jurisdiction exists.
While judicial decisions can not create jurisdiction in the tribunal that decides what jurisdiction a court, competent to try the question of fact or law involved, can, by deciding that another court has jurisdiction, preclude inquiry into said jurisdiction unless the decision is directly attacked. Railway Co. v. Daughtry, 138 U.S. 298; Cable v. Ry., 88 F. 803; Connell v. Smiley, 156 U.S. 335; Davies v. Lathrop, 13 F. 565; Railway v. Ramsey, 22 Wall. 322; Sims v. Hundley, 6 How. 1; De Sobrey v. Nicholson, 3 Wall. 420; Goodnow v. Burrows, 74 Iowa 266; Kirby v. Railway Co., 106 F. 552.
While the order of the state court granting a removal will not avail against conflicting action on part of the Federal courts, if such order is neither appealed from nor nullified by the court to which the removal is taken, such order of the state court, as against collateral attack, establishes conclusively that there was jurisdiction to remove. Telegraph Co. v. Griffith (Ga.), 30 S.E. 420; Dillon's Rem. of Causes (5th ed.), 174; Black, Dillon Rem. par. 191; Removal Cases, 100 U.S. 474; Stone v. South Carolina, 117 U.S. 430; Bank v. Dodge, 42 N.J.L. 316; Walker v. O'Neil, 38 F. 374; Goodnow v. Burrows, 74 Iowa 266.
In condemnation proceedings the words plaintiff and defendant can only be used in an uncommon and liberal sense, and although a state statute may describe the landowner and the condemning corporation as plaintiff and defendant respectively, and the state court may hold them to be such, this court is not bound by that construction in construing the act of Congress regarding removal of causes and may determine the relation of the parties and who is entitled to remove the suit. A condemnation proceeding is a suit even though the condemning corporation may be free to decline to take the property after the valuation, it being charged with costs in case it elects not to take. Under the Iowa statute, in a condemnation proceeding, the landowner is the defendant within the meaning of the act of Congress regarding removal of causes, and may remove the proceeding to the proper United States Circuit Court, notwithstanding the state statute provides that he is the plaintiff in such proceedings.
MR. JUSTICE HOLMES, after making the foregoing statement, delivered the opinion of the court.
In Madisonville Traction Co. v. Saint Bernard Mining Co., 196 U.S. 239, it was decided that proceedings of this character could be removed to the United States Circuit Court. The question to be decided now is only whether the removal in this case can be upset on the ground that it was asked by the wrong party. The railroad company relies upon the words of the Iowa Code, § 2009, quoted above, and upon a decision of the Supreme Court of the State in a case like the present, except that the railroad was a foreign company, in which it was held that the railroad had a right to remove. Myers v. Chicago Northwestern Ry. Co., 118 Iowa 312, 324. See also Kirby v. Chicago Northwestern Ry. Co., 106 F. 551. It is said that this court is bound by the construction given to the state law by the state court. Indeed the above § 2009 does not need construction; it enacts, in terms, that the landowner shall be plaintiff. As the right to remove a suit is given only to the defendants therein, being non-residents of the State, it is argued that the state decision ends the case.
But this court must construe the Act of Congress regarding removal. And it is obvious that the word defendant as there used is directed toward more important matters than the burden of proof or the right to open and close. It is quite conceivable that a state enactment might reverse the names which for the purposes of removal this court might think the proper ones to be applied. In condemnation proceedings the words plaintiff and defendant can be used only in an uncommon and liberal sense. The plaintiff complains of nothing. The defendant denies no past or threatened wrong. Both parties are actors: one to acquire title, the other to get as large pay as he can. It is not necessary in order to decide that the present removal was right to say that the state decision was wrong. We leave the latter question where we find it. But we are of opinion that the removal in this case was right for reasons which it will not take long to state.
It is said the proceedings only become a case, within the meaning of the Act of Congress, after the preliminary assessment and the appeal, and that then the landowner is in the position of one demanding pay for property which he has lost. If we take a general view of the Iowa statutes, this conclusion is not correct. The railroad might have taken the appeal. If it had, the landowner would have been on the defensive in endeavoring at least to uphold the assessment, but he would have been called the plaintiff none the less. Whichever party appeals, it is not true that the landowner is seeking pay for what he has lost. By § 2011 the railroad is free to decline to take the property if it thinks the price too large. Even if, as in this case, it deposits the amount first assessed with the sheriff, the latter is not to pay it over until the determination of the appeal. Sec. 2010. We see no reason to suppose that the deposit impairs the railroad's right to withdraw, although the Supreme Court of Iowa says, ubi supra, that by payment and entry the railroad appropriates the land. See § 2013. Probably, too, the position of the parties under the Act of Congress should be determined upon general considerations without regard to what has happened. Looked at as a whole, the Iowa statutes provide a process by which railroads and others may acquire land for their purposes which the owner refuses to sell. The first step is the valuation. Whether it is part of the case or not, it is a necessary condition to the proceedings in court. Against the will of the owner the title to the land is not acquired until the case is decided and the price paid. The intent of the railroad to get the land is the mainspring of the proceedings from beginning to end, and the persistence of that intent is the condition of their effect. The State is too considerate of the rights of its citizens to take from them their land in exchange for a mere right of action. The land is not lost until the owner is paid. Therefore, in a broad sense, the railroad is the plaintiff, as the institution and continuance of the proceedings depend upon its will. Hudson River Railroad Terminal Co. v. Day, 54 F. 545.
It is not argued that this is any the less a suit because the railroad is free to decline to take the property. The adjudication fixes the right of the railroad to take the land at the price adjudged, and charges it with costs and attorney's fees taxed by the court, in case it elects not to take. The question is not discussed in Madisonville Traction Co. v. Saint Bernard Mining Co., 196 U.S. 239, where, if there had been anything in it, possibly it might have been raised.
As what we have said is sufficient to dispose of the matter of the certificate, we think it unnecessary to consider other arguments, or to answer any question but the first.
The first question is answered, Yes.
Alert