Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 2.djvu/465

 458 PEDEEAL EEPOBTBB. �plea, have duly presented the same to the court, or otherwîse he would be debarred from asserting it. This was not done by him. The defence of want of jurisdiction under such cir- cumstances is purely technical, and the bankrupt bas chosen not to present it and insist upon it. Creditors of the bank- rupt are in no respect damnified by the conduct of the bank- rupt. Whatever their rights may have been they are still in full force, and nothing has transpired which can in any way injure any one of the creditors. It is said very often in the books that an assignee in bankruptcy is not estopped by fraud of the bankrupt, but by this ia understood a fraud which in some way may prove detrimental to the rights of creditors. �The circuit court has prescribed its rules as to the methods and times at which objections to its jurisdiction must be pre- sented for determination, and if, upon the record as it stands, the court has jurisdiction, and the defendant does not, within the rules, make manifest his objection, he will be forever estopped from availing himself of it ; and so, likewise, will be ail other parties who are in privity with such defendant. If a party has in apt words duly averred his citizenship, in an action instituted by him in the circuit court, and the defendant at the proper time fails to controvert it, the ques- tion of citizenship is no longer open to inquiry, either on the part of the defendant or any one claiming under him, smi according to well-settled principles his assignee in bankruptcj cannot be heard to deny such citizenship of the plaintiff. The case is clearly within the rule hereinbefore stated, as taken from the opinion of the supreme court in Yeapman v. Savings Institution. �If the court is willing to accept the allegations and assume jurisdiction, and hear and determine the cause, ail the fraud which has been perpetrated has been practiced upon the court, and in the present case, in the opinion of the court, each party has been alike involved in it. The court has thus been induced to act and assume a jurisdiction which it should not have been called upon to do, but the judgment itself is en- tirely valid, and the rights of the parties cannot be said to ����