STATE BANK
v.
ST. LOUIS RAIL FASTENING COMPANY
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State Bank sought to recover on checks from St. Louis Rail Fastening Company in a dispute valued below $5,000, with jurisdiction depending on a certificate of division of opinion from the Circuit Court. The Supreme Court dismissed the writ because the certified question was too general—asking whether the plaintiff had a legal right to recover on all the facts—rather than presenting a specific point of law, as required by the certificate of division procedure. The Court held that under the applicable statute, a certificate of division of opinion must submit particular legal questions to the Supreme Court, not the entire merits of the case.
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Mr.. Justice Gray,
after'stating the case as above reported, delivered the opinion of the court.
The matter in dispute being less than $5000, the jurisdiction of this court depends upon' the certificate of division of opinion,' in which the only question certified is whether, upon all thé facts found by the court, the plaintiff has the legal right ,to recover upon the checks in controversy.
But the office of a certificate of a division of opinion between two judges in the Circuit Court is to submit.to this court one or more points of law, and not the whole case, nor the general question whether upon all the facts, as agreed by the parties in a case stated, or specially found by the court when a trial by jury has been waived, the judgment should be for the one party or the other. In Harris v. Elliott, 10 Pet. 25, one of the questions certified was, “upon the facts stated, whether, the plaintiffs have any right or title to the lands taken for streets, in which the trespass is supposed to have been committed, and can maim tain their said action.” This court held that it could express no opinion upon that question, because, as said by Mr. Justice^ Thompson in delivering judgment, it “is too general, embracing the merits of the whole case, and does not present any single point or question; and it has been repeatedly ruled in this court, that the whole case cannot be brought here, under the act of 1802, upon such a general question.”
The subsequent decisions under the successive acts of Congress upon this subject are uniformly to the same effect. United States v. Briggs, 5 How. 208; Nesmith v. Sheldon, 6 How. 41; Waterville v. Van Slyke, 116 U. S. 699; Williamsport Bank v. Knapp, 119 U. S. 357.
The necessary conclusion is, that the question certified cannot be answered, and that the
Writ of error must he dismissed.
Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus
Citator
Cited By
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Jewell v. Knight, 123 U.S. 426 (U.S. 1887)…uld, 4 Pet. 392; United States v. Bailey, 9 Pet. 267; Harris v. Elliott, 10 Pet. 25; White v. Turk, 12 Pet. 238; United States v. Briggs, 5 How. 208; Sadler v. Hoover, 7 How. 646; United States v. Northway, 120 U.S. 327; State Bank v. St. Louis Co., 122 U.S. 21. Nor can a splitting up of the whole case into the form of several questions enable the court to take jurisdiction. White v. Turk, above cited; Nesmith v. Sheldon, 6 How. 41; Luther v. Borden, 7 How. 1, 47; Webster v. Cooper, 10 How. 54. In Webster…
Authorities Cited
- Samuel D. Harris and others v. Elliott, 10 Pet. 25 (U.S. 1836)
- Nesmith v. Sheldon, 6 How. 41 (U.S. 1848)
- The United States v. Ephraim Briggs, 5 How. 208 (U.S. 1847)
- Waterville v. Van Slyke, 116 U.S. 699 (U.S. 1886)
- Williamsport Bank v. Knapp, 119 U.S. 357 (U.S. 1886)