Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/449

 WALKEB ». FLINT. 43T �tion should come before the court through a plea in abate- ment. Tie parties, however, to avoid technioalities, costs, and delay, assert that the question may be considered as on a proper plea in abatement, �This court bas had occasion, within the past year, to express its views upon supposed conflicts of jurisdiction between state and United States courts in like cases.* The rule is that when a state court has, through any of its ofScers, custody of property, a United States court will not interfere with said custody, and, on the other hand, will not permit interference with its own custody. That rule is essential, under our complex System of government, to due harmony of administration, and to avoid unseemly conflicts. If rests not on comity alone, but on the true theory of our governmental sy? tcm, state and federal. There is to be no interferience, one with the other, where each is acting within legal limits ; but, on the other hand, neither is to transcend legal or coiistitutional limits, or deprive a party of his eonsti- tutional rights. �It is often difficult to ascertain the precise limits to* be observed under the rules just stated, as it is to reconcile adjudi- cations had. The cases above cited, and the two cases of Payne v. Hook in the United States supreme court, seem not to be in accord. Whether so or not, the case before the court is free from such embarrassment. The rights of all parties had been settled by the partition decree in the state court, despite which one had become a trespasser on the premises of the other. Because the trespasser passed into liquidation under a state law, and his tenants who were co-trespassers attorned to the state liquidator, the real and adjudicated owner, being a citizen of another state, could not be thus deprived of his constitutional right to be heard in this court. The point decided is, not that of interference with the un- doubted possession, rightfully, of property by the officer of another court, but that of an attempt to oust this court of jurisdiction by the attomment of trespassers to such tres- passing officer. �*See Levi v. Columbia Life Ins. Co. 1 Fbd. Rep. 206. ��� �