Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 4.djvu/119

 STEVENS V. THE EAILROADS. 105 �March 3, 1875. 18 U. S. St. 472. I doubt if a bill requiring a Personal injunction, and whera the injunction is the chief relief sought, could be brought here under that section, and if not the defendants would have to go to the states wherQ the plaintiffs reside. Their argument is that there is no justice in compelling them to this course when the plaintiffs have already brought a suit, and ever^hing is ready for the hear- ing on the very issues to be made by these proposed injunc- tion suita, and I am of opinion that it is well taken, unless the plaintiffs have an unqualified right of dismissal. �In Booth V. LeycesUr, 1 Keen, 247, 255; S. C. 15 Eng. Ch. E. 247, Lord Langdale, master of the rolls, said that "he had a strong impression at first that a plaintiff might dismiss hisown cause upon paymenb of costs at any time; but, upon inquiring into the practice, he fouud the rule to be otherwise, and it was certainly quite reasonable that a plaintiff ought not to have the power of dismissing his bill, when by so doing he might prejudice the detendant." Elsewhere it is said, in the report of the case, that it was "the opinion of the most experienced officers of the court that the order was irregular." The cause had stood over to enable his lorJship to examine the cases as to the practice, and he stated it as above quoted. There were two suits, Booth v. Leycester and Palmer v. Leycester, the latter being the one sought to be dis- missed. The report is somewhat misleading in calling the second a " cross-hill," because it was uot a cros3-bill in the first suit, but an independent bill, more properly called in oiher parts of the report a "cross cause." The two causes had been prepared for hearing, and set down together, when the defendant in the first cause, who was plaintiff in the second, obtained an order, as of course, to dismiss his own bill, and then objected that there was a waut of parties in the first. This order of dismissal was sot aside as irregular. The ground taken for the dismissal was that Palmer, the plaintiff, had misconstrued a will, under which he claimed in the bill that he was tenant in fee, when he was only a tenant for life. If he was tenant for life, the first suit was defective for want of parties, and this was the advantage he dought by dismissing ����