Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/599

 BUCKMAN V. EUCKMAN, B91 �8 Wheat. 421. In Wood v. Davis, 18 How. 469, the supreme court saya "that formai parties, or nominal parties, or parties without interest, united with the real parties to the Utigation, cannot oust the federal courts of jurisdiction if the citizen- ship or character of the real parties be such as to confer it within the eleventh section of the judiciary act." �If then, as here, aU the defendants who are actual parties to the controversy in the suit join in the petition, may not the removal take place under the first clause of the section, in which the conditions of removal are that the suit shall em- brace a controversy between citziens of different states, and one or other of the parties shall petition for the removal ? �The suggestion was made on the argument that as the peti- tion for removal alleged as authority for the same one of the grounds stated in the first clause of the second section of the act, if the court found, upon inquiry, that the cause did not fall within these provisions, it should be remanded, without looking further and ascertaining whether the record disclosed any other ground on which the removal could be based. �I do not 80 understand the law. The question in this court is not whether the counsel for the petitioners comprehends and assigns the true reasons for the removal, but whether the whole record reveals a case over which the court has jurisdiction. No matter how irregularly the petition brings up the suit, wben it is here the only question is whether it involves a controversy properly within the jurisdiction of the court. If it does, it will not be remanded because a mistake was made by the counsel of the petitioners in assigning grounds for the removal which prove to be untenable. Such is a fair construction of the provisions of the fifth section of the act, and such, I understand, was held to be the law by Judge Drummond, in Osgood v. The Ry. Co. 6 Biss. 386. �The motion to remand is denied. ��� �