Benjamin Robbins Curtis

“ The New York Common Pleas is a common-law court, and had an original jurisdiction of this cause, of which it could not be deprived by a paramount statute. Ex parte Bollman, 4 Cranch, 75. This jurisdiction, and the right of the State court to decide on the application for a removal of the cause, is conceded in the act of Congress, by requiring the presentment of a petition for such removal. ”

“ On the contrary, the affidavit merely states that the demand made by the declaration was more than 'the actual amount due to him;' that such amount was less than $500, and that he 'now,' (that is, at the time of making the affidavit, being thirteen days after the filing of the petition, and after the defendant's right to a removal had become perfect,) limits and reduces his claim to the sum of $499.56.
3. The act of Congress does not provide that the State court may retain its jurisdiction, if the plaintiff will reduce his demand below $500. ”

“ A declaration before judgment is like any other paper in the proceedings of a cause, and may be disputed and amended until the matters alleged in it have been finally adjudicated and settled, and until it has been enrolled, and then it becomes a record, and is 'the highest evidence,' and not until then. ”

“ Longest, 16 Peters, 97; and the same construction has been put upon the eleventh and twenty-second sections of the judiciary act, which makes the jurisdiction of this court and the Circuit Court dependent on the amount or value of 'the matter in dispute.' The settled rule is, that until some further judicial proceedings have taken place, showing upon the record that the sum demanded is not the matter in dispute, that sum is the matter in dispute in an action for damages. ”

“ They were in matters of substance; they consisted in the court's withholding a right to which the defendant was entitled under the act of Congress, and in their persisting to exercise jurisdiction, and to amend the declaration, and render a judgment, after it had 'become their duty to proceed no further in the cause.'
'Where the law has given to the parties rights, as growing out of a certain state of facts, there discretion ceases.' Gordon v. Longest, supra; People v. Superior Court of New York, 5 Wend. 125, and 10 ib. 291.
Mr. Martin, for defendant in error. ”

“ Green v. Liter, 8 Cranch, 229; Wise v. The Col. Turnpike Co. 7 Cranch, 276; Gordon v. Ogden, 3 Peters, 33; Smith v. Honey, 3 Peters, 469; Den v. Wright, 1 Peters C. C. R. 64; Miner v. Dupont, 2 Wash. C. C. R. 463 ”