Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/110

 98 FEDEBAIi SEPOBTEB. �must take place, if at ail, under the act of March 3, 1875, (18 U. S. St. at Large, 470.) The only question that will be considered is as to time. By section 3 of that act the peti- tion for removal must be filed in the state court "before or at the term at which said cause could be first tried, and before the trial, thereof." This provision applies to "any suit men- tioned in" section 2 of that act. Section 2 applies to "any suit of a civil nature, at law or in equity, now pending or hereafter brought in any state court." This suit was pend- ing in the state court when the act of March 3, 1875, was approved. The petition for removal in this case was filed in the state court on the thirty-first of December, 1880. Not only was the petition for removal not filed before or at the term 'at which the cause could be first tried after March 3, 1875, but it was. not filed before or at the term at which the cause was, in fact, first tried, nor was it filed before the trial of the cause. As applicaible to a case like the present, the words "the trial" must be read as if they were "the first trial." In view of prior removal aots the words "first trial" have a special meaning, and the words "the trial" refer to the trial involved in the preceding words "first trial." �Under section 639 of the Eevised Statutes it was, as to cases under subdivisions 2 and 3 of that section, in sufficient time if the petition was filed "at any time before the trial or final bearing" of the suit. The act of July 27, 1866, (14 U. S. St. at Large, 306,) embodied in subdivision 2 of section 639, used the words "trial or final hearing." The act of March 2, 1867, (Id. 558,) embodied in subdivision 3 of sec- tion 639, used the words "final hearing or trial." These last words were altered in the Eevised Statutes to read "trial or final hearing." The words in the act of 1867 were passed upon by the supreme court in Ins. Co. v. Dunn, 19 Wall. 214, and it was held that the word "final" applied to "trial" as well as to "hearing," and that under that act a suit at law could be removed by a petition filed at any time before its final trial, — that is, at any time before a trial final in the cause as it stood when the application for removal was raade, — and therefore that it could be removed after a verdict on a trial ��� �