Baltimore v. Bates

This suit was brought in the court of common pleas of Licking county, Ohio, on the first of July, 1875, by George Bates, a citizen of Ohio, against the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, a Maryland corporation, and having its principal office in that state, to recover damages for personal injuries. The railroad company filed a general demurrer to the petition on the twentieth of September, 1876, and on the seventh of April, 1877, this demurrer was sustained, and judgment entered in favor of the company. On the seventh of July, 1877, this judgment was reversed by the district court of the county, and the cause remanded to the common pleas for further proceedings. When the case got back, the railroad company filed a petition for removal to the circuit court of the United States for the Southern district of Ohio, under subsection 3 of section 639 of the Revised Statutes, on the ground of prejudice and local influence. The petition was in proper form, and it was accompanied by the necessary affidavit; but the security was such as was prescribed by section 639 of the Revised Statutes, and not such as was required by section 3 of the act of March 3, 1875, (chapter 137, 18 St. pt. 3, 470.) The act of 1875 requires security for 'all costs that may be awarded by the said circuit court, if the said court shall hold that such suit was wrongfully or improperly removed thereto.' This is not found in section 639.

The petition for removal was denied by the court of common pleas December 22, 1877, and thereupon the railroad company answered, and the parties went to a trial May 23, 1878, when a judgment was rendered against the company. The case was taken then, on petition in error, to the district court of the county, because, among others, the court erred in denying the petition for removal. On the twenty-eighth of February, 1880, the district court reversed the judgment for this error, and the case was then taken to the supreme court of the state, where the judgment of the district court was reversed, and that of the common pleas affirmed, on the fifteenth of May, 1883; that court holding that the security was defective, because it was not such as the act of 1875 required. To reverse that judgment this writ of error was brought.

John K. Cowen and Hugh L. Bond, Jr., for plain iff in error.

Gibson Atherton, for defendant in error.

[Argument of Counsel from pages 465-467 intentionally omitted]

WAITE, C. J.