Statement of the Case.

her agents and attorneys to take immediate steps to disavow the authority of said Boyd to make such contracts; that the testimony of said Mayer as to the existence of said pretended letter is false and in pursuance of a conspiracy to defraud petitioner, or that said pretended letter, if it ever had an existence, is a false and forged document; that this testimony and much more testimony necessary to establish the falsity of said evidence upon which said judgments were obtained and the forgery of said pretended letter to said Boyd was unknown to petitioner at the time of the trial and could not have been known to or anticipated by her, and has been discovered by her since the rendition of said judgments in said suit and since the lapse of the legal delays within which a motion could be made for a new trial, and that there has been no laches on her part in failing to show the falsity of such evidence and the forgery of such pretended letter on the trial of the cause."

Such was the case made in the petition. The relief asked was an injunction against Mayer and the defendant in error, Holmes, sheriff of the parish, restraining them from executing the above judgments or any of them; that Mayer be cited to answer the petitioner's demand; that the judgments be annulled and avoided as obtained upon false testimony and forged documents; and that the petitioner have general and equitable relief.

A writ of injunction was issued as prayed for; and upon a supplemental petition, showing Mayer to be a non-resident of Louisiana, a curator ad hoc was appointed to represent him. Mayer appeared and filed exceptions and pleas of estoppel and res adjudicata.

Subsequently, June 5, 1885, Mrs. Marshall filed a petition, accompanied by a proper bond, for the removal of her suit into the Circuit Court of the United States, upon the grounds that she was a citizen of New York, and the defendants respectively were citizens of Mississippi and Louisiana; that the controversy was wholly between citizens of different States; and that it could be fully tried and determined between them. The court made an order refusing the application for removal. The pleas were referred to the merits, and ordered to stand as

Argument for Defendants in Error.

an answer. Mayer answered, reiterating the allegations of the pleas previously filed by him, excepting to the petition as not disclosing any cause of action, denying each averment of the petition not admitted in the pleas, and praying that the plaintiff's demand be rejected.

Upon the trial of the case judgment was rendered, dissolving the injunction, and authorizing Mayer to execute the judg ments enjoined. Judgment was also rendered in his favor, on the injunction bond, for ten per cent on the amounts enjoined (special damages as attorney's fees) and for twenty per cent on such amounts as general damages. An appeal by the plaintiff to the Supreme Court of Louisiana was dismissed for want of jurisdiction in that court to review the judgment. It was held that the appeal should have gone to the proper State Court of Appeals. 39 La. Ann. 313. Thereupon, an appeal was prosecuted to the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit of the State of Louisiana, where the original judgment, after being amended by reducing the general damages to ten per cent, was affirmed. From that judgment Mrs. Marshall prosecuted the present writ of error.

Mr. A. Q. Keasbey for plaintiff in error. Mr. Wheeler H. Peckham filed a brief for same.

Mr. Charles H. Boatner for defendants in error.

First. The amount involved was not sufficient to justify the removal of the cause, and the Circuit Court properly denied it.

Complainant has, according to the allegations of her bill, twenty-three causes of action, but no one of them involves a value of as much as five hundred dollars.

The causes of action which she sets forth are not contradictory, and, therefore, under the laws of Louisiana, may be emulated or joined in the same suit, but for jurisdictional purposes each distinct cause of action must stand for itself. Thus, while one may in the same suit assert the ownership of a horse and also claim that defendant owes a sum of money

VOL. CXLI-38

Opinion of the Court.

the value of the horse cannot be added to the sum of money to make either original or appellate jurisdiction.

The supreme court of Louisiana very tersely says: "Common sense and logic alike point to the rule that a cause not appealable in amount to this court for the review of the judg ment rendered therein cannot be made appealable here to review the judgment rendered in action of nullity in the same cause." Marshall v. Holmes, 39 La. Ann. 313, 315. The same principle applies in questions of removal.

Second. The removal should not have been allowed, because the complainant practically seeks to have the Federal court review the judgment of the state court in causes which were exclusively within the jurisdiction of the state court and which that court has finally decided.

In Barrow v. Hunton, 99 U. S. 80, 85, the court says: "The character of the cases themselves is always open to examination for the purpose of determining whether, ratione materiæ, the courts of the United States are incompetent to take jurisdiction thereof."

An examination of the case under consideration shows that David Mayer instituted twenty-three suits against as many tenants on complainant's plantation. She was made a party defendant in each case and judgment prayed against her for the amount due by her codefendant. One of these cases was selected as a test case and tried, the plaintiff introducing all the evidence on which he relied to prove that Mrs. Marshall had authorized her agent to make contracts with persons furnishing her tenants necessary supplies, by which she waived in their favor her superior lien as lessor.

The state court has, therefore, in each of these cases, considered Mrs. Marshall's denial of authority and decided against her. She now seeks, by cumulating twenty-three distinct demands in one suit, to have this court review the judgments which Ihtve been rendered against her. This cannot be done. Nougue v. Clapp, 101 U. S. 551; Graham v. Boston, Hartford & Erie Railroad, 118 U. S. 161.

MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, after stating the case, delivered the opinion of the court.

Opinion of the Court.

After the filing of the petition for removal, accompanied by a sufficient bond, and alleging that the controversy was wholly between citizens of different States, the state court was without authority to proceed further if the suit, in its nature, is one of which the Circuit Court of the United States could rightfully take jurisdiction. If, under the act of Congress, the cause was removable, then, upon the filing of the above petition and bond, it was in law removed so as to be docketed in that court, notwithstanding the order of the state court refusing to recognize the right of removal. Steamship Co. v. Tugman, 106 U. S. 118, 122; St. Paul & Chicago Railway v. McLean, 108 U. S. 212, 216; Stone v. South Carolina, 117 U. S. 430; Crehore v. Ohio & Miss. Railway, 131 U. S. 240.

Is the right of removal affected by the fact that no one of the judgments against the plaintiff in error exceeded the amount-five hundred dollars exclusive of costs-limited, by the act of 1875, for the jurisdiction, whether original or upon removal, of a Circuit Court of the United States, in suits between citizens of different States? We think not. The judgments aggregate more than three thousand dollars. They are all held by Mayer, and are all against Mrs. Marshall. Their validity depends upon the same facts. If she is entitled to relief against one of the judgments, she is entitled to relief against all of them. The cases in which they were rendered were, in effect, tried as one case, so far as she and Mayer were concerned; for the parties stipulated that the result in each one not tried should depend upon the result in the one tried. As all the cases not tried went to judgment in accordance with the result in the one tried; as the property of Mrs. Marshall was liable to be taken in execution on all the judgments; as the judgments were held in the same right; and as their validity depended upon the same facts, she was entitled, in order to avoid a multiplicity of actions, and to protect herself against the vexation and cost that would come from numerous executions and levies, to bring one suit for a decree finally determining the matter in dispute in all the cases. And as, under the rules of equity obtaining

Opinion of the Court.

in the courts of the United States, such a suit could be brought, the aggregate amount of all the judgments against which she sought protection, upon grounds common to all the actions, is to be deemed, under the act of Congress, the value of the matter here in dispute.

According to the averments of the original petition for injunction filed in the state court which averments must be taken to be true in determining the removability of the suit -the judgments in question would not have been rendered against Mrs. Marshall but for the use in evidence of the letter alleged to be forged. The case evidently intended to be presented by the petition is one where, without negligence, laches or other fault upon the part of petitioner, Mayer has fraudulently obtained judgments which he seeks, against conscience, to enforce by execution. While, as a general rule, a defence cannot be set up in equity which has been fully and fairly tried at law, and although, in view of the large powers now exercised by courts of law over their judgments, a court of the United States, sitting in equity, will not assume to control such judgments for the purpose simply of giving a new trial, it is the settled doctrine that "any fact which clearly proves it to be against conscience to execute a judg ment, and of which the injured party could not have availed himself in a court of law, or of which he might have availed himself at law, but was prevented by fraud or accident, unmixed with any fault or negligence in himself or his agents, will justify an application to a court of chancery." Marine Ins. Co. v. Hodgson, 7 Cranch, 332, 336; Hendrickson v. Hinckley, 17 How. 443, 445; Crim v. Handley, 94 U. S. 652, 653; Metcalf v. Williams, 104 U. S. 93, 96; Embry v. Palmer, 107 U. S. 3, 11; Knox County v. Harshman, 133 U. S. 152, 154; 2 Story's Eq. Jur. §§ 887, 1574; Floyd v. Jayne, 6 Johns. Ch. 479, 482. See also United States v. Throckmorton, 98 U. S. 61, 65.

But it is contended that it was not competent for the Circuit Court of the United States, by any form of decree, to deprive Mayer of the benefit of the judgments at law; and that Mrs. Marshall could obtain the relief asked only in the court in