Page:United States Reports, Volume 209.djvu/530

 504 OCTOBER TERM, 1907. Opinion of the Court. 209 U.S. Wheat. 699; St. Lou{s &c. Ry. v. McBride, 141 U.S. 127, 131, and cases cited." See also Southern Pacific Company v. Denton, 146 U.S. 202. In Central Trust Co. v. McGeorge, 151 U.S. 129, 132, an ac- tion after the act of 1888 was in force, and in which neither party was a citizen of the State or resided in the district in which the action was brought, Mr. Justice Shims used this language: "Undoubtedly, if the defendant company which was sued in another district than that in which it had its domJell, had, by a proper plea or motion, sought to avail itself of the statu- tory exemption, the action of the court (in dismissing the com- plaint) would have been right. But the defendant company did not choose to plead that provision of the statute, but entered a general appearance and joined with the complain- ant in its prayer for the appointment of a receiver, and thus was brought within the ruling of this court, so frequently made, that the exemption from being sued out of the district of its domicil is a personal privilege which may be waived, and which is waived by pleading to the merits." In Martin's Administrator v. Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company, 151 U.S. 673, where objection was made to a re- moval on the ground that the removal petition was filed too late, Mr. Justice Gray, on page 688, observed: "The time of filing a petition for the removal of a case from a state court into the Circuit Court of the United States for trial is not a fact in its nature essential to the jurisdiction of the national court under the Constitution of the United States, like the fundamental condition of a controversy between citizens of different S(ates. But the direction as to the time of filing the petition is more analogous to the direction that a civil suit within the original jurisdiction of the Circuit Court of the United States shall be brought in a certain district, a non-compliance with which is waived by a defendant who does not seasonably object that the suit is brought in the

�