This case comes within the established rule that on an
application for removal from a state to a federal court, the
federal question or the federal character of the defendant company
must appear from the complaint in the action in order to justify a
removal, and such federal question or character does not appear in
this case.
This was an action brought in the Circuit Court of the State of
Oregon for Wasco County by Jane Skottowe against the Oregon Short
Line and Utah Northern Railway Company for personal injuries
alleged to have been caused by the negligence of the defendant
company. The complaint was filed on October 31, 1890, and on
November 10, 1890, the defendant filed a petition for the removal
of the cause from the state court into the circuit court of the
United States. This petition was denied, to which ruling the
defendant excepted.
The case was proceeded in, and trial on the merits in the state
court resulted in a verdict and judgment in favor of the plaintiff
in the sum of $10,000. To this judgment a writ of error was sued
out to the Supreme Court of the State of Oregon, assigning as
error, among others, the action of the trial court in denying the
defendant's petition for the removal of the cause into the circuit
court of the United States.
The supreme court of the state affirmed the judgment of the
trial court, and a writ of error was allowed to this Court.
Page 162 U. S. 493
MR. JUSTICE SHIRAS, after stating the facts in the foregoing
language, delivered the opinion of the Court.
In the complaint, the defendant was described as "a corporation
duly organized, existing, and doing business in the State of
Oregon." The accident which caused plaintiff's injuries was alleged
to have taken place at The Dalles on the Columbia River, and within
the State of Oregon.
In the removal petition, the defendant was alleged to be a
consolidated company composed of several railway corporations
severally organized and created under the laws of the Territories
of Utah and Wyoming and of the State of Nevada, and under an act of
Congress approved August 2, 1882, entitled "An act creating the
Oregon Short Line Railway Company, a corporation in the territories
of Utah, Idaho and Wyoming, and for other purposes," and an Act of
Congress approved June 20, 1878, making the Utah and Northern
Railway Company a railway corporation in the territories of Utah,
Idaho, and Montana.
It was not claimed either in the petition for removal or in the
answer subsequently filed that the defendant company had any
special defense arising under the acts of Congress which
Page 162 U. S. 494
constituted a federal question over which the courts of the
United States had exclusive jurisdiction, but the contention is
that if any of the corporate powers of a railroad company depend
upon the legislation of Congress, the right of removal exists.
Congress has frequently conferred upon railway companies
existing under territorial or state laws additional corporate
franchises, rights, and privileges, and its right to do so cannot
be doubted. Thus it was held in
California v. Pacific Railroad
Company, 127 U. S. 39,
that Congress possessed and validly exercised the power to create a
system of railroads connecting the East with the Pacific Coast,
traversing states as well as territories, and to employ the agency
of state as well as federal corporations.
And it must also be conceded that it was decided in the
Pacific Railroad Removal Cases, 115 U. S.
1, that where corporations created by acts of Congress
have become consolidated with state corporations, and where
"the whole being, capacities, authority, and obligations of
companies so consolidated are so based upon, permeated by, and
enveloped in the acts of Congress that it is impracticable, so far
as the operations and transactions of the companies are concerned,
to disentangle their qualities and capacities which have their
source and foundation in these acts from those which are derived
from state or territorial authority,"
suits by and against such corporations are "suits arising under
the laws of the United States," and removable as such from state
courts into circuit courts of the United States.
Even if the Acts of Congress of June 20, 1878, and August 2,
1882, so far conferred substantial rights and privileges upon the
territorial and state corporations consolidated as the Oregon Short
Line and Utah Northern Railway Company as to bring that company
within the doctrine of the
Pacific Railroad Removal Cases,
yet we think that the present case comes within the rule that the
federal question, or the federal character of the defendant
company, must appear from the complaint in the action in order to
justify a removal, and that such federal question or character does
not so appear.
Page 162 U. S. 495
There is no propriety in further considering that rule, because
the reasons of it were fully set forth in the case of
Tennessee
v. Union & Planters' Bank, 152 U.
S. 454, and again in the very recent cases of
Chappel v. Waterworth, 155 U. S. 102;
East Lake Land Co. v. Brown, 155 U.
S. 488, and
Postal Tel. Cable Co. v. Alabama,
155 U. S. 482.
The conclusion reached in those cases may be briefly stated
thus: under the Acts of March 3, 1887, c. 373, 24 Stat. 552, and
August 13, 1888, c. 866, 25 Stat. 433, a case (not depending on the
citizenship of the parties, nor otherwise specially provided for)
cannot be removed from a state court into the circuit court of the
United States as one arising under the Constitution, laws, or
treaties of the United States unless that appears by the
plaintiff's statement of his own claim, and if it does not so
appear, the want cannot be supplied by any statement in the
petition for removal or in the subsequent pleadings.
The counsel for the plaintiff in error do not seek, as we
understand them, to obtain a reconsideration of this question, but
they advance an ingenious argument to distinguish the present from
those cases. It is claimed that when a bill of complaint or
declaration alleges that the defendant is an incorporated company,
it thereby tenders, or implicitly alleges, the charter of articles
of incorporation of the corporation, including all these statutes
and grants of power under and by virtue of which it acquired the
right to become a corporation and to exercise corporate powers and
privileges. In the words of the plaintiff's brief:
"It must be held that the complaint alleges all these facts
which it would be necessary for the plaintiff to prove were each
and every allegation of the complaint denied by answer. For the
purposes of determining as to whether or not the defendant could
remove on the ground that the suit was one arising under the
Constitution and laws of the United States (as the petition for
removal must be filed on or before the answer day), it must be
assumed that the cause of action upon which the suit is brought
arises upon all the facts which it would be necessary for the
plaintiff to prove to maintain his cause of action, and among the
most
Page 162 U. S. 496
important of those facts are the corporate existence, the
corporate character, and the corporate powers of the defendant
company."
Applying these propositions to the case in hand, it is contended
that when the plaintiff alleged in her complaint that
"he defendant is a corporation duly organized, existing, and
doing business in the State of Oregon, and as such corporation is,
and was at all the times and dates hereinafter mentioned and long
prior thereto, in the operation of a railroad running from
Portland, Oregon, to The Dalles and Pendleton, Oregon, and other
places further east, generally known as the 'Oregon Railway and
Navigation Company's Line of Road,' and in connection therewith and
incident thereto, has been for such time, and now is, in the
possession of, and operating, a line of boats running from The
Dalles, Oregon, to Portland, Oregon, together with all the bridges,
wharf boats, ways, etc., used in getting to and from the landings
of the aforesaid line of boats, and had been, and was, and still
is, carrying passengers for hire thereon as a common carrier for
hire,"
she must be deemed to have thus alleged and brought to the
knowledge of the court the entire legal history of the defendant
company, its various component parts, with their several acts of
incorporation, and particularly the two acts of Congress before
referred to, and that with this information thus spread before it,
the court was obliged to perceive that the defendant company was
within the rule laid down in the
Pacific Removal Cases,
and entitled to remove the case into the circuit court of the
United States.
We think the unsoundness of the proposition relied on by the
plaintiff in error may be sufficiently shown by the very test which
its counsel suggest, namely, what facts would it be necessary for
the plaintiff to prove to maintain her action? Suppose the
complaint in the present case to have been traversed by a plea of
the general issue; would it have been necessary for the plaintiff
to prove any other facts than those alleged? Evidence tending to
show that a company styled the Oregon Short Line and Utah Northern
Railway Company was operating and conducting a line of railroad
between Portland,
Page 162 U. S. 497
Oregon, and The Dalles, Oregon, as a common carrier for hire;
that the plaintiff, as a passenger for hire, was injured while in
the lawful use of such railroad; that the injuries were caused by
the defendant's negligence, and the nature and extent of the
injuries thus caused, would, if believed by the jury, have clearly
sustained the material allegations of the complaint. To justify a
recovery in such a case, it would not be necessary for the
plaintiff to allege or to prove the extent and nature of the
defendant's corporate powers. The defendant's liability did not
arise out of its grants of rights and privileges from the several
territories or from the United States. It grew out of its
negligence and misconduct in the management of a railroad in the
State of Oregon, into which state it is not pretended that it
entered by reason of anything contained in any act of Congress.
It is urged that, as the plaintiff alleged that the defendant
was "a corporation duly organized, existing, and doing business in
the State of Oregon," there would have been a fatal failure in the
proof if no evidence was adduced to show the nature and character
of the defendant's charter. We do not think so. As already said,
those allegations were sufficiently sustained by evidence of the
defendant's actual operation and management of the railroad.
Whether the defendant was a corporation
de jure or
de
facto was, in a case like the present, of no importance. If
the plaintiff had actually undertaken to show the true character
and extent of the defendant's corporate powers as a lawfully
organized company, and had failed to show such an organization,
such failure would not have defeated her recovery if her other
allegations had been made good.
But even if the court was obliged, under the allegations of the
plaintiff's complaint, to take judicial notice of the defendant
company's charter, no act of Congress was pointed out under which
it was acting when operating the railroad in the State of Oregon.
So far as appears, the defendant company existed and was doing
business in the State of Oregon solely under the authority of that
state, whether express or permissive. The two acts of Congress
referred to do not disclose any intention
Page 162 U. S. 498
on the part of Congress to confer powers or rights to be
exercised outside of the territory named therein.
The Supreme Court of Oregon committed no error in affirming the
action of the trial court denying the petition for removal, and its
judgment is
Affirmed.