West v. Aurora City/Opinion of the Court

by Salmon P. Chase

United States Supreme Court

73 U.S. 139

West  v.  Aurora City

We think that the Circuit Cou t was clearly right in its action. The filing of the additional paragraphs did not made a new suit within the meaning of the Judicial Act. They were in the nature of defensive pleas, coupled with a prayer for injunction and general relief. This, if allowed by the code of Indiana, might give them, in some sense, the character of an original suit, but not such as could be removed from the jurisdiction of the State court. The right of removal is given only to a defendant who has not submitted himself to that jurisdiction; not to an original plaintiff in a State court who, by resorting to that jurisdiction, has become liable under the State laws to a cross-action.

And it is given only to a defendant who promptly avails himself of the right at the time of appearance, by declining to plead and filing his petition for removal.

In the case before us, West and Torrance, citizens of Ohio, voluntarily resorted, as plaintiffs, to the State court of Indiana. They were bound to Know of what rights the defendants to their suit might avail themselves under the code. Submitting themselves to the jurisdiction they submitted themselves to it in its whole extent. The filing of the new paragraphs, therefore, could not make them defendants to a suit, removable on their application to the Circuit Court of the United States.

It is equally fatal to the supposed right of removal that the record presents only a fragment of a cause, unintelligible except by reference to other matters not sent up from the State court and through explanations of counsel.

A suit removable from a State court must be a suit regularly commenced by a citizen of the State in which the suit is brought, by process served upon a defendant who is a citizen of another State, and who, if he does not elect to remove, is bound to submit to the jurisdiction of the State court.

This is not such a suit, and the order of the Circuit Court remanding the cause to the State court must therefore be

AFFIRMED.

Notes