This is a motion to dismiss an appeal for want of a citation The facts are these: A decree was entered by the supreme court of the District of Columbia on the twenty-first of November, 1882, dismissing the bill in a suit between Robert C. Hewitt, complainant, and Lewis S. Filbert and others, defendants. On the same day an appeal was allowed in open court, but that appeal was never docketed in this court by the appellant. It was, however, docketed by the appellee, and dismissed under rule 9, on the fifteenth of October, 1883, but the mandate was not sent down until March 25, 1885. In the mean time, on the twenty-sixth of June, 1884, Hewitt appeared in the supreme court of the district, at general term, and, on his ex parte application, an order was entered allowing him a second appeal upon his giving security in the sum of $500. After the close of the term at which this order was made, and on the eighteenth of August, a bond was approved by one of the justices and filed in the office of the clerk of that court. The case was docketed in this court on the twentieth of August, 1884, but no citation has ever been issued or served.
Except in cases of appeals allowed in open court during the term at which the decree appealed from was rendered, a citation returnable at the same term with the appeal or writ of error is necessary to perfect our jurisdiction of the appeal or the writ, unless it has been in some proper form waived. The San Pedro, 2 Wheat. 142; Yeaton v. Lenox, 7 Pet. 220; Villabolos v. U.S.,, 6 How. 90; U.S. v. Curry, Id. 111; Castro v. U.S., 3 Wall. 50; Alviso v. U.S., 5 Wall. 824. In Dayton v. Lash, 94 U.S. 112, it was held that, if a citation was actually issued, but not served before the first day of the term to which it was returnable, leave might be granted to make the service during that term. In this way the language of the court in Villabolos v. U.S. and U.S. v. Curry, which seemed to require service as well as issue of the citation before the return-day of the appeal or writ of error, was to some extent qualified; but the authority of those cases as to the necessity of an actual issue of the citation and service before the end of the return-term was in no way impaired. On the contrary, it was fully recognized. So, in Railroad Co. v. Blair, 100 U.S. 661, where an appeal was allowed in open court at a term subsequent to that in which the decree appealed from was rendered, but when the solicitors of the appellee were present and had actual notice of what was done, leave was granted to issue a citation and have it served during the return-term of the appeal.