1. In a suit against a corporation by one state, an averment
that the defendant is a body politic by the law of another state,
named and "doing business" in it, is not sufficient to give
jurisdiction to this Court.
2. This Court has no original jurisdiction of a suit brought by
a state against its own citizens.
The first clause of the second section of the third article of
the Constitution ordains that the judicial power shall extend to
certain cases named, and among them "to controversies between a
state and the citizens of another state."
The second clause of this same section provides:
"That in all cases affecting ambassadors &c., and those in
which a state shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have
original jurisdiction,' and that 'in all the other cases before
mentioned, it shall have appellate jurisdiction."
The 13th section of the Judiciary Act provides:
"That the Supreme Court shall have exclusive jurisdiction of all
controversies of a civil nature where a state is a party, except
between a state and its citizens, and except also between
Page 77 U. S. 554
a state and citizens of another state or aliens, in which latter
case it shall have original, but not exclusive, jurisdiction."
In this state of the law, constitutional and statutory, the
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania brought an original suit against the
Quicksilver Mining Company. The declaration was thus:
"The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, by her attorney-general,
complains of the Quicksilver Mining Company, a body politic in the
law of, and doing business in, the State of California, of a plea
that the said company render unto the said commonwealth the sum of
$100,000,"
&c.
Page 77 U. S. 555
MR. JUSTICE NELSON delivered the opinion of the Court.
By the second section of the third article of the Constitution,
it is ordained that the judicial power shall extend "to all
controversies between a state and the citizens of another state."
The second clause of this section provides
"That in all cases affecting ambassadors &c., and those in
which a state shall be a party, the Supreme Court shall have
original jurisdiction. . . . In all other cases before mentioned,
it shall have appellate jurisdiction. "
Page 77 U. S. 556
This second clause distributes the jurisdiction conferred upon
the Supreme Court in the previous one into original and appellate
jurisdiction, but does not profess to confer any.
The thirteenth section of the Judiciary Act, quoted
supra, which provides for the jurisdiction of this Court,
accords with this construction.
A state therefore may bring a suit by virtue of its original
jurisdiction against a citizen of another state, but not against
one of her own. And the question in this case is whether it is
sufficiently disclosed in the declaration that this suit is brought
against a citizen of California. And this turns upon another
question, and that is whether the averment there imports that the
defendant is a corporation created by the laws of that state, for,
unless it is, it does not partake of the character of a citizen
within the meaning of the cases on this subject.
*
The Court is of opinion that this averment is insufficient to
establish that the defendant is a California corporation. It may
mean that the defendant is a corporation doing business in that
state by its agent, but not that it had been incorporated by the
laws of the state. It would have been very easy to have made the
fact clear by averment, and, being a jurisdictional fact, it should
not have been left in doubt. Indeed, it was admitted in the
argument that the defendant was a Pennsylvania corporation, and the
jurisdiction sought to be sustained by a suit against this agency.
We have already shown that this is unavailable to support the
jurisdiction.
Motion granted and the writ dismissed.
*
Marshall v. Baltimore &
Ohio R. Co., 16 How. 314, and cases there
cited.