United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Devoe Manufacturing Company, 108 U.S. 401 (1883)

Devoe Manufacturing Company

Original

Decided May 7, 1883

108 U.S. 401

Syllabus

1. The District Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey has jurisdiction of a suit in admiralty, in personam, against a New York corporation, where it acquires such jurisdiction by the seizure, under process of attachment, of a vessel belonging to such corporation when such vessel is afloat in the Kill van Kull, between Staten Island and New Jersey at the end of the dock at Bayonne, New Jersey at a place at least 300 feet below high water mark and nearly the same distance below low water mark and is fastened to said dock by means of a line running from the vessel and attached to spikes on the dock.

2. A vessel so situated is within the territorial limits of the State of New Jersey and of the District of New Jersey, and is not within the territorial limits of the New York or of the Eastern District of New York.

3. The subject matter of the dispute as to boundary between New York and New Jersey explained, and the settlement as to the same made by the agreement of September 16, 1833, between the two states, as set forth in and consented to by the act of Congress of June 28th, 1834, c. 120, 4 Stat. 708, interpreted.

4. When Congress enacts that a judicial district shall consist of a state, the boundaries of the district vary afterwards as those of the state vary.

Petition for writ of prohibition to the District Court of the United States for the District of New Jersey, proceeding as a court of admiralty. The sole question at issue was whether that court had jurisdiction in admiralty over a vessel afloat but fastened by a hawser to the end of a dock in the Kill van Kull, between Staten Island and New Jersey at a place about three hundred feet distant in the stream from the line of ordinary low water mark.

Page 108 U. S. 404