Opinion of the Court.

the venue the court held that the corporation must be deemed to be a resident of Essex County, and the venue should be changed to that county. "The only question," said the court, "is whether a railroad corporation can be said to reside, within the meaning of the act of the legislature, in as many counties as it happens to traverse with its road, or whether, if it can be properly said to have any residence, that residence is not to be taken to be in the county where it keeps its principal office of business. . . The course of legislation on the subject of corporations would indicate that they are to be considered as having a residence where their office or place of business is located."

In the case of the Connecticut & Passumpsic Rivers Railroad Co. v. Cooper, 30 Vermont, 476, it was declared that, where a corporation is not located by the terms of its charter, its residence and location are regarded as being in the place where it keeps its principal office and does its corporate business. The fact that the railway ran through another county was regarded as unimportant and not constituting a residence of the corporation. In the case of the Western Transportation Company v. Scheu, 19 N. Y. 408, a corporation organized to navigate the lakes was declared to have its domicil, for the purposes of taxation, in the city or town in which the principal office for managing the affairs of the company was located, as evidenced by its certificate of organization, although it had an office elsewhere, employing the services of twenty times as many agents, and where a much larger proportion of its moneys was received and disbursed, and where its principal officers resided during the business season. See also Pelton v. Transportation Co., 37 Ohio St. 450; Jenkins v. California Stage Co., 22 California, 537; Sangamon & Morgan Railroad v. Morgan Co., 14 Illinois, 163; and to the contrary, Sherwood v. Saratoga & Washington Railroad, 15 Barb. 650; Bristol v. Chicago & Aurora Railroad Co., 15 Illinois, 436; Slavens v. South Pacific Railroad, 51 Missouri, 308.

The judgment of the court below must, therefore, be Reversed, and the case remanded for further proceedings in conformity to this opinion.

Dissenting Opinion: Jackson, Harlan, JJ.

MR. JUSTICE JACKSON, with whom concurred MR. JUSTICE HARLAN, dissenting.

I cannot concur in the opinion and judgment of the court in this case. The jurisdictional averments set out in the petition are that the plaintiff below was a citizen of the State of Chihuahua, in the Republic of Mexico, and that the defendant was a corporation duly organized under the laws of the State of Texas, and was a citizen thereof, with its railway, on which its cars were run and operated, extending from the city of Houston to the city of El Paso, in that State. These averments brought the case directly within the fifth class of civil suits described in the first section of the acts of March 3, 1887, c. 373, 24 Stat. 552, and August 13, 1888, c. 866, 25 Stat. 433, of "a controversy between citizens of a State and foreign States, citizens, or subjects," the matter in dispute being in excess of $2000, exclusive of interest and costs.

The defendant appeared specially and interposed the follow-. ing plea in abatement :

"That, nevertheless, while it admits that the defendant operates a line of railroad through the county where this suit is pending, and maintains a ticket and freight office and depot, and has an agent on whom process, under the law of Texas, may be served there, the said defendant is not an inhabitant of the judicial district in which the suit is pending; that it is a corporation duly incorporated and existing under the laws of Texas, having its principal office, habitat, and domicil in the city of Houston, Harris County, Texas, and beyond and not within this judicial district, but within the Eastern District of Texas."

This presents the question whether the fact that the defendant's principal office is located at Houston in the Eastern District of Texas prevents the railway company from being sued by an alien in the United States Circuit Court for the Western District of that State, held at El Paso, the western terminus of the railroad. The opinion of the court answers this question affirmatively, upon the ground that the location of the company's principal office fixes the domicil or residence

Dissenting Opinion: Jackson, Harlan, JJ.

of the corporation, so that it cannot be treated or regarded as an inhabitant of any other district in the State of its creation, although by the laws of that State it is liable and subject to be sued in every county through which its lines extend.

This conclusion is rested upon the doctrine announced in Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444, and Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202, that a corporation, incorporated in one State only and doing business in another State, was not an inhabitant of the latter within the meaning of the Judiciary Acts, and liable to be sued in the Circuit Courts of the United States held therein, if objection is properly made.

The present case is clearly distinguishable from these authorities in two respects: first, that the defendant corporation is a citizen of the State of Texas in which it is sued; and, second, that the parties to the controversy are not citizens of different States of the Union, as was the case in those decisions. In other words, Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444, and Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202, dealt with cases where the controversy was between citizens of different States, while the present case involves a controversy between an alien and a citizen, and presents the question whether the citizenship of the defendant corporation is coextensive with the line of its road, and the actual exercise of its franchise within the State of its creation, or is limited and restricted to the place where its chief office is located.

Neither the plea in abatement nor the opinion of the court question the fact that the railway company was and is a citizen of the State of Texas, for purposes of Federal jurisdiction at the suit of an alien, but the opinion, in effect, if not in express terms, restricts and confines that citizenship to the county or place in which the principal office of the company is located. There are two serious objections to this conclusion of the court. First, there is no warrant for giving the railway company a domicil or residence confined to one of its termini in the State of its creation; and, second, the present case is not controlled by that provision of the Judiciary Acts of 1887 and 1888, which provide that "where the jurisdiction is

Dissenting Opinion: Jackson, Harlan, JJ.

founded only on the fact that the action is between citizens of different States, suits shall be brought only in the district of the residence of either the plaintiff or defendant."

In respect to the first objection: While the statute of Texas, Art. 4120, referred to in the opinion, provides that the principal office of a railway company shall be considered the domicil of such corporation, it is also provided by article 1198, subdivision 21, that suits against any private corporation may be commenced in any county where the cause of action arose, or in which such corporation has an agent or representative, and that "suits against a railroad corporation may also be brought in any county through or into which its railroad

extends."

In St. Louis & San Francisco Railway v. Traweek, 84 Texas, 65, the Supreme Court of Texas, in considering this provision of the Revised Statutes, held that a railway company was a private corporation, within the meaning of the act, and that it could be sued in any county through which the road extended, or in which it had an agent for the transaction of its business, thus extending the residence of the corporation and its liability to be sued beyond the place of its principal office.

In Bristol v. Chicago and Aurora Railroad, 15 Illinois, 436, 437, it was held that "the residence of a corporation, if it can be said to have a residence, is necessarily where it exercises corporate functions. It dwells in the place where its business is done. It is located where its franchises are exercised. It is present where it is engaged in the prosecution of the corporate enterprise. This corporation has a legal residence in any county in which it operates the road or exercises corporate powers and privileges. In legal contemplation, it resides in the counties through which its road passes, and in which it transacts its business."

The same principle was announced in Slavens v. South Pacific Railroad, 51 Missouri, 308, 310, where it was held that "a residence of a railroad corporation is in any county through which its line of road passes, and in which it has an agent upon whom process can be served."

Dissenting Opinion: Jackson, Harlan, JJ.

So, in Locomotive Safety Truck Co. v. Erie Railway, 10 Blatchford, 292, 306, it was held that a corporation, if it can be properly said to reside at all, resides in all of the districts of the State creating it, and that the legal existence of the defendant railroad company under its incorporation by the State of New York was coextensive with the territorial limits of that State.

In Davis v. Central Railroad and Banking Co., 17 Georgia, 323, the same question was presented in a somewhat different form. The constitution of Georgia provided that "the inferior courts shall have also concurrent jurisdiction in all civil cases, excepting cases respecting titles to lands, which shall be tried in the county where the defendant resides." By an act passed in 1854, railroad companies of the State were subject to suit in the counties in which injuries to stock, etc., may have been committed. The plaintiff in that case, under this act of 1854, sued the railroad company in the county in which the injury was committed, and the railroad company filed a plea to the jurisdiction, on the ground that the corporation had its principal office and residence in a different county, and was not, therefore, under the constitution, suable in any other county. But, after a full consideration of the question, the Supreme Court of Georgia held that the railroad company was a resident of every county through which its line of railroad extended.

The statute of Texas, however, even if it gave to the defendant corporation in this case a residence confined to the locality of its principal office, does not control the question here presented. The opinion proceeds upon the theory that the question of jurisdiction depends upon the residence of the defendant corporation, and is controlled by the first section of the act of 1887, providing that "where the jurisdiction is founded only on the fact that the action is between citizens of different States, suits shall be brought only in the district of the residence of either the plaintiff or defendant."

This, however, is a misapprehension of the statute. That clause of the act relates alone to suits between citizens of different States of the Union, and has no application to a case