James Brown, Plaintiff in Error v. Richard R. Keene

This appeal is from a decree of the court of the United States for the district of Louisiana. The first error assigned in the proceedings is, that the petition, which, in the practice of Louisiana, is substituted for a declaration, does not show, with sufficient certainty, that the parties were with the jurisdiction of the court. If this objection be well founded, it is undoubtedly fatal. The petition avers, that the plaintiff, Richard Raynal Keene, is a citizen of the state of Maryland; and that James Brown, the defendant, is a citizen or resident of the state of Louisiana, holding his fixed and permanent domicil in the parish of St Charles. The petition, then, does not aver positively, that the defendant is a citizen of the state of Louisiana, but in the alternative, that he is a citizen or a resident. Consistently with this averment, he may be either.