Melville Fuller

“ Your petitioners have reason to and do believe that from prejudice or local influence they nor either of them, will not be able to obtain justice in such state court. They file this petition for the removal of said cause of Parker v. Clarkson and others, now pending in the circuit court for Kanawha county, West Virginia, into the district court of the United States held at Charleston, West Virginia ”

“ In the first petition nine persons, and in the second six, are designated from among the defendants as citizens and inhabitants of the state of West Virginia. It is stated in the first petition that Clarkson's assignee in bankruptcy was at the time of filing it a citizen and inhabitant of the state of Virginia. The assignee did not join in the second, although his name is signed by attorney to the bond given on removal. ”

“ Iron Co. v. Ashburn, 118 U.S. 54, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 929; Hancock v. Holbrook, 119 U.S. 586, 7 Sup. Ct. Rep. 341; Fletcher v. Hamlet, 116 U.S. 408, 6 Sup. Ct. Rep. 426. It does not appear from either of these petitions and affidavits, or elsewhere in the record, that diverse citizenship as to the parties therein named existed at the time of the commencement of the suit, nor that diverse citizenship existed between the complainant and all the necessary defendants at the time the petitions and affidavits were severally filed. ”