Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/70

 66 FEDERAL REPORTER. �the defendant in that case sued out a writ of error to the supreme court and gave a supersedeas bond, to which the defendants in the case decided were parties as obligors. The writ of error was dis- missed, and the judgment of the court below in the first case was affirmed. Thereupon a suit was brought upon the bond, (which is the case cited,) and the defendants plead to the jurisdiction of the court on the ground that all the parties were citizens of the state of Illinois. Judge Drummond held that the dispute was one arising under the laws of the United States, within the act of March 3, 1875, and sustained the jurisdiction. It is notioeable, first, of this case, that the original action against the construction company, and the suit on the supersedeas bond, were both brought in the circuit court; and from remarks of the learned judge in the opinion, it is evident he was inelined to the view that the latter suit was but an incident to the original; that they were inseparably eonnected together; and that on that ground jurisdiction Was maintainable as in the ordinary case of a purely ancillary action. But, going further, the judge says that the bond sued on was a security given under a statute of the United States and a rule of the supreme court, and therefore that the damages and costs to be reoovered in a suit on the bond must be determined by a construction of the statute, because the statute fixed the measure of the damages and governed the rights of the parties. So, unlike the case at bar, the cause of action and the measure of recovery, in the suit on the supersedeas bond, were directly grounded on a federal statute, and whatever questions might arise would, ex necessitate, be questions arising under a law of the United States, and to be determined with the law and the rules of the supreme court as the basis of whatever judgment might be rendered. And Judge Drummond, as a test, puts this question : �" Is it not * * * manifest that if a state court took jurisdiction of such a controversy, it might ultimately, under law or under the rule, be carried ta the su;;<reme court of the United States ?" �Certainly the distinction is a plain one between that case and the one in hand, when the particular features of the two cases are con- sidered. Here is a creditor's bill — an original bill in this court — • raising no question as to the validity of the deeree in the district court, involving no construction of any federal statute or of any rule of court, nor the exercise of any power having its source in any such statute or rule, and presenting no controversy or question which would make the case removable ultimately to the supreme court. ��� �