Opinion of the Court.

237 U. S.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a bill to quiet title to land in Alabama. It was dismissed by the Circuit Court on demurrer and the decree was affirmed without further discussion by the Circuit Court of Appeals. 189 Fed. Rep. 205. 199 Fed. Rep. 989. The plaintiffs and appellants are children of the late General Hood and were adopted in Louisiana in 1880 by George T. McGehee, who bought the property in question in 1886. The defendants are McGehee's heirs if the Louisiana adoption does not entitle the plaintiffs to the Alabama land. The bill sets up that the adoption did entitle them to it by virtue of Article IV, § 1, of the Constitution and the Act of Congress in pursuance of the same, entitling the Louisiana record to full faith and credit. By the instrument of adoption the McGehee's 'bind and obligate themselves to support, maintain and educate them [the plaintiffs] as if they were their own children; and hereby invest them with all the rights and benefits of legitimate children in their estate'; and the bill further sets up that the latter clause constituted a contract with the plaintiffs so to invest them. It alleges services as children to McGehee and also in advance to him of $8,600, being the plaintiffs' share of the Hood Relief Fund collected in the Southern States. Finally a familiar letter of McGehee to the plaintiffs, which has been probated as a will in Mississippi where McGehee lived, but is not alleged to have been admitted to probate in Alabama, is set forth, valeat quantum. It states that, with immaterial exceptions, 'everything else of mine is to be yours equally divided' and that the letter will be valid as a will.

The alleged will is relied upon only as confirming the intent supposed to be expressed by the instrument of adoption and as showing that if the bill is dismissed it should be dismissed without prejudice. As there seems to be no ground for supposing that it could take effect on real estate

237 U. S.

Opinion of the Court.

in Alabama it may be laid on one side. The other contentions were correctly disposed of by Judge Grubb in an accurately reasoned opinion. The Alabama statute of descents as construed by the Supreme Court of the State excludes children adopted by proceedings in other States. Brown v. Finley, 157 Alabama, 424. Lingen v. Lingen, 45 Alabama, 410. There is no ground upon which we can go behind these decisions, and the law so construed is valid. The construction does not deny the effective operation of the Louisiana proceedings but simply reads the Alabama statute as saying that whatever may be the status of the plaintiffs, whatever their relation to the deceased by virtue of what has been done, the law does not devolve his estate upon them. There is no failure to give full credit to the adoption of the plaintiffs, in a provision denying them the right to inherit land in another State. Alabama is sole mistress of the devolution of Alabama land by descent. Olmsted v. Olmsted, 216 U. S. 386.

The language relied upon as a contract was simply the language of adoption used in the duly authorized notarial act. It had its full effect by constituting the plaintiffs adopted children under the Louisiana law. It gave them whatever rights the Louisiana law attempted and was competent to give them as such children, and it did not purport to do more. As matter of supererogation we may repeat the remark of Judge Grubb that the proceeding gave the children all that was expected at the time, as it was effective in Louisiana and recognized in Mississippi, and that it cannot acquire a greater scope on the strength of a subsequent purchase in Alabama, or from McGehee's mistaken expectation that the land would descend to them.

Decree affirmed.

No. 293. Submitted May 14, 1915. Decided June 1, 1915.

This action by the trustee to recover funds formerly belonging to the bankrupt corporation, not being a suit to avoid a transfer by the bankrupt of its property, but a suit against wrongdoers who had appropriated the bankrupt's property without its assent, is not one within §§ 23b and 70e of the Bankruptcy Act, and the District Court properly dismissed the bill for want of jurisdiction.

THE facts, which involve the right of a trustee in bankruptcy to recover funds formerly belonging to the bankrupt, are stated in the opinion.

Mr. John Neethe, Mr. J. D. Williamson and Mr. Rhodes S. Baker for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Charles A. Boynton, Mr. W. M. Sleeper and Mr. Ben G. Kendall for defendants in error.

MR. JUSTICE HOLMES delivered the opinion of the court.

This is a suit by a trustee in bankruptcy to recover funds formerly belonging to the bankrupt. The District Court dismissed the bill for want of jurisdiction. The defendants in error admit that the court had jurisdiction of a suit by the trustee to recover property fraudulently transferred by the bankrupt, §§ 23b, 70e, but deny that this is such a suit. The plaintiff says that it is so that our decision must rest upon an analysis of the bill. The trouble with it is that the cause of action is not very steadily conceived;

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Opinion of the Court.

but in view of what seem to us the dominant allegations we are of opinion that the decree was right.

If we stopped with the opening averment it is uncompromising: that the bankrupt transferred to the defendants, for the purpose of defrauding its creditors, $8,250 in cash. The declaration goes on to tell that the defendants, being largely interested in the bankrupt Corporation, bought 275 shares of one Altgeld to prevent the depreciation of the stock on the market; that they sold them to Harris, but had trouble about collecting the price (two notes for $4,125 each, secured by the stock), Harris discovering that he had been overreached; that thereafter the defendants, being directors, conspired with one Kirksey, the general manager, and induced him to make a pretended purchase of the stock, but really for the Corporation, and to use in payment for the same $8,250 of the Corporation's funds; that the Corporation had no funds with which to purchase its own stock but was heavily involved and that the sale was void; that the purchase was a pretense to purchase the stock from the defendants and that $4,125 of the Corporation's funds were received by each of them. Then it is alleged that the defendants knew or ought to have known that the Corporation was not indebted to Kirksey, that it was insolvent, and 'that the stock so pretended to be sold by them, either to the said Kirksey, or to the said Corporation, was of no value' and that the money received was the property of the bankrupt. So far it might seem that the declaration sustained the plaintiff's contention. But it continues that the Corporation did not authorize the foregoing transactions or ratify them, and that the defendants knew it; and 'that to conceal said misapplication of funds' the defendants caused entries to be made on the Corporation's books making the transaction appear to be a purchase of the stock by Kirksey, contrary to the facts, 'and the defendants knew said S. F. Kirksey, Jr., was not to repay said funds to said Corpora

tion' and the liability was not intended to be a bona fide one and afterwards pursuant to the conspiracy was cancelled and retired. The other allegations are not material to the question before us. Those that we have recited seem to us in their conclusion to import not that the corporation has done anything, but that certain of its officers by false pretenses have withdrawn its funds. If so the suit is not to avoid a transfer by the bankrupt of its property, but a suit against wrongdoers who have appropriated it without the bankrupt's assent, and therefore not within §§ 23b and 70e of the Act.

Judgment affirmed.

G. & C. MERRIAM COMPANY v. SYNDICATE PUBLISHING COMPANY.

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE SECOND CIRCUIT.

No. 217. Argued April 14, 1915. Decided June 1, 1915.

In a case where diverse citizenship exists, the decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals is final unless in addition to the allegations of diverse citizenship, the bill contains averments of a cause of action, and consequent basis of jurisdiction, arising under the Constitution or laws of the United States.

ìî the jurisdiction of the District Court was invoked on the ground of diversity of citizenship, and averments as to a Federal right are unsustainable and frivolous, or foreclosed by former adjudication of this court, the appeal from the judgment of the Circuit Court of Appeals must be dismissed.

Where the jurisdiction below rests on diverse citizenship, averments of unfair trade, which do not contain any elements of a cause of action under the Federal Constitution or statutory law, afford no basis for jurisdiction of this court of an appeal from the decree of the Circuit Court of Appeals.