Under the Act of March 3, 1887, 24 Stat. 552, c. 373, as amended
by the Act of August 13, 1888, 25 Stat. 433, c. 552, a circuit
court of the United States has not jurisdiction on the ground of
diverse citizenship if there are two plaintiffs to the action who
are citizens of and residents in different states and the defendant
is a citizen of and resident in a third state and the action is
brought in the state in which one of the plaintiffs resides.
This action was dismissed by the court below for want of
jurisdiction, to which judgment the plaintiffs below sued out this
writ of error. The case is stated in the opinion.
MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court.
This is a writ of error to the Circuit Court for the Eastern
District of Missouri. It was dismissed in that court for want of
jurisdiction, and judgment rendered accordingly, to which this writ
of error is prosecuted. 38 F. 53. The facts out of which the
controversy arises are found in the first few lines of plaintiff's
petition. In this they allege that they are partners doing business
under the firm name of C. H. Smith & Co.; that the said C. H.
Smith is a resident and citizen of St. Louis, in the State of
Missouri, and Benjamin Fordyce is a resident and citizen of Hot
Springs, in the State of Arkansas, and that the defendant, O. T.
Lyon, is a resident and citizen of Sherman, in the State of Texas.
To this petition, which set out a cause of action otherwise
sufficient, the defendant, Lyon, who was served with the summons in
the Eastern District of Missouri, filed a plea to the
Page 133 U. S. 316
jurisdiction of the court, appearing by attorney especially for
that purpose, the ground of which is that one of the plaintiffs,
Benjamin Fordyce, is and was at the time of the institution of this
suit a resident and citizen of Hot Springs, in the State of
Arkansas, and the defendant was a resident and citizen of Sherman,
in the State of Texas, and that the suit was not brought in the
district of the residence of either the plaintiff Fordyce or of the
defendant.
The motion to dismiss for want of jurisdiction was sustained by
the circuit court, and the soundness of that decision is the
question which we are called upon to decide.
The decision of it depends upon the proper construction of the
first section of the Act of Congress approved March 3, 1887, 24
Stat. 552, as amended by the Act of August 13, 1888, 25 Stat. 433.
That statute professes to be an act to amend the Act of March 3,
1875, and its object is "to determine the jurisdiction of circuit
courts of the United States, and to regulate the removal of causes
from state courts, and for other purposes." The first section of
the act confers upon the circuit courts of the United States
original cognizance, concurrent with the courts of the several
states, of all suits of a civil nature at common law or in equity
where the matter in dispute exceeds the sum of $2,000 and arising
under the Constitution or laws of the United States or treaties
made or which shall be made under their authority. It then proceeds
to establish a jurisdiction in reference to the parties to the
suit. These are controversies in which the United States are
plaintiffs or in which there shall be a controversy between
citizens of different states, with a like limitation upon the
amount in dispute, and other controversies between parties which
are described in the statute. This first clause of the act
describes the jurisdiction common to all the circuit courts of the
United States as regards the subject matter of the suit and as
regards the character of the parties, who, by reason of such
character, may, either as plaintiffs or defendants, sustain suits
in circuit courts. But the next sentence in the same section
undertakes to define the jurisdiction of each one of the several
circuit courts of the United States with reference to its
territorial
Page 133 U. S. 317
limits, and this clause declares
"That no person shall be arrested in one district for trial in
another in any civil action before a circuit or district court, and
no civil suit shall be brought before either of said courts against
any person by any original process or proceeding in any other
district than that whereof he is an inhabitant; but where the
jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the action is between
citizens of different states, suit shall be brought only in the
district of the residence of either the plaintiff or the
defendant."
In the case before us, one of the plaintiffs is a citizen of the
state where the suit is brought -- namely, the State of Missouri,
and the defendant is a citizen of the State of Texas. But one of
the plaintiffs is a citizen of the State of Arkansas. The suit, so
far as he is concerned, is not brought in the State of which he is
a citizen. Neither as plaintiff nor as defendant is he a citizen of
the district where the suit is brought. The argument in support of
the error assigned is that it is sufficient if the suit is brought
in a state where one of the defendants or one of the plaintiffs is
a citizen. This would be true if there were but one plaintiff or
one defendant. But the statute makes no provision in terms for the
case of two defendants or two plaintiffs who are citizens of
different states. In the present case, there being two plaintiffs
citizens of different states, there does not seem to be, in the
language of the statute, any provision that both plaintiffs may
unite in one suit in a state of which either of them is a
citizen.
It may be conceded that the question thus presented, if merely a
naked one of construction of language in a statute introduced for
the first time, would be one of very considerable doubt. But there
are other considerations which must influence our judgment and
which solve this doubt in favor of the proposition that such a suit
cannot be sustained.
The original Judiciary Act of 1789, which established the courts
of the United States and defined their jurisdiction, declared in
reference to the circuit courts, in section 11 of that act, 1 Stat.
78, that the circuit courts shall have original cognizance,
concurrent with the courts of the several states, of all suits of a
civil nature at common law or in equity
Page 133 U. S. 318
where the matter in dispute exceeds, exclusive of costs, the sum
or value of $500 and the United States are plaintiffs or
petitioners, or an alien is a party, or the suit is between a
citizen of the state where the suit is brought and a citizen of
another state. The construction of this phrase, "where the suit is
between a citizen of the state where the suit is brought and a
citizen of another state" came before the Supreme Court at an early
day in the case of
Strawbridge v.
Curtiss, 3 Cranch 267, and Chief Justice Marshall
delivered the opinion of the Court, which was without dissent, in
the following language:
"The court understands these expressions [referring to the words
'suit between a citizen of the state where the suit is brought and
a citizen of another state'] to mean that each distinct interest
should be represented by persons all of whom are entitled to sue or
may be sued in the federal courts. That is, that where the interest
is joint, each of the persons concerned in that interest must be
competent to sue, or liable to be sued, in those courts."
This construction has been adhered to from that day to this,
and, although the statutes have modified the jurisdiction of the
Court as regards the amount in controversy and in many other
particulars, the language construed by the Court in
Strawbridge
v. Curtiss has been found in all of them. This statute,
conferring and defining the jurisdiction of circuit courts of the
United States, has been reenacted and recast several times since
the original decision of
Strawbridge v. Curtiss. The first
of these was the general revision of the statutes of the United
States passed in 1874, in which the language of the statute of 1789
is supposed to be reproduced accurately. But an Act of March 3,
1875, 18 Stat. 470, undertook to recast the jurisdiction of the
circuit courts, and its first section, the important one in this
connection, contains the same language in regard to the
jurisdiction of the court in controversies between citizens of
different states, and also the provision that no civil suit shall
be brought in either of said courts by any original process or
proceeding in any other district than that whereof he is an
inhabitant or in which he
Page 133 U. S. 319
shall be found at the time of serving process. The statute
remained in this condition until the act of 1887, which we are now
considering, as amended by the Act of August 13, 1888. 25 Stat.
433.
During this period and since the case of
Strawbridge v.
Curtiss, this jurisdictional clause has been frequently
construed by this Court, and that case has been followed. In the
case of
New Orleans v.
Winter, 1 Wheat. 91, the same question arose and
was decided in the same way. In the case of
Coal
Company v. Blatchford, 11 Wall. 172, MR. JUSTICE
FIELD, referring to these decisions, states the effect of them in
the following language:
"In other words, if there are several co-plaintiffs, the
intention of the act is that each plaintiff must be competent to
sue, and if there are several codefendants each defendant must be
liable to be sued, or the jurisdiction cannot be entertained."
The question was very fully considered in the case of
The Sewing Machine
Companies, 18 Wall. 553, where the same proposition
is stated in almost identical language. And in the case of
Peninsular Iron Company v. Stone, 121 U.
S. 631, the Chief Justice reviews all these cases, and
reaffirms the doctrine as applicable to cases arising under the act
of 1875. The statute which we are now construing leaves out the
provision that if the party has the diverse citizenship required by
the statute, he may be sued in any district where he may be found
at the time of the service of process. The omission of these words,
and the increase of the amount in controversy necessary to the
jurisdiction of the circuit court, and the repeal of so much of the
former act as allowed plaintiffs to remove causes from the state
courts to those of the United States, and many other features of
the new statute show the purpose of the legislature to restrict,
rather than to enlarge, the jurisdiction of the circuit courts,
while at the same time a suit is permitted to be brought in any
district where either plaintiff or defendant resides.
We do not think, in the light of this long continued
construction of the statute by this Court during a period of nearly
one hundred years, in which the statute has been the subject of
Page 133 U. S. 320
renewed legislative consideration, and of many changes, but has
always retained the language which was construed in the case of
Strawbridge v. Curtiss, that we are at liberty to give
that language a new meaning when it is used in reference to the
same subject matter. It is not readily to be conceived that the
Congress of the United States, in a statute mainly designed for the
purpose of restricting the jurisdiction of the circuit courts of
the United States, using language which has been construed in a
uniform manner for over ninety years by this Court, intended that
that language should be given a construction which would enlarge
the jurisdiction of those courts and which would be directly
contrary to that heretofore placed upon it by this Court.
These considerations require the affirmance of the judgment
of the circuit court, and it is so ordered.