by John Marshall Harlan

“ Why should a valuable consideration have passed at all, when the stockholders of the grantor corporation and the stockholders of the grantee corporation were, at the time of the conveyance, the same individuals? Could it be expected that those stockholders, acting as one body, under the name of the Virginia Coal & Iron Company, would take money out of one pocket for the purpose of putting it into another pocket, which they had and used only while acting under the name of the Lehigh Mining & Manufacturing Company? ”

“ The organization of the Pennsylvania corporation and the conveyance of it by the Virginia corporation, for the sole purpose of creating a case cognizable by the circuit court of the United States, is, in principle, somewhat like a removal from one state to another with a view only of invoking the jurisdiction of the federal court. ”

“ The Pennsylvania corporation neither paid nor assumed to pay anything for the property in dispute, and was invested with the technical legal title for the purpose only of bringing a suit in the federal court. As we have said, that corporation may be required, by those who are stockholders of its grantor, and who are also its own stockholders, at any time, and without receiving therefor any consideration whatever, to place the title where it was when the plan was formed to wrest the judicial determination of the present controversy from the courts of the state in which the land lies. ”