This Supreme Court case involved four complainants and appellants, Robert Milnor, John Thompson, David Petrikin and Levi Woodbury (Secretary of the Treasury), who were appealing a decision made by George W. Metz. The dispute was over an act passed in 1836 that authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to issue certificates for certain duties on imports paid prior to July 1st 1837. These certificates could then be used as payment towards public lands or other government debts. In this particular case, it was determined that these certificates had been issued without proper authority from Congress and thus were not valid legal tender; therefore they could not be accepted as payment for public land purchases or any other government debt owed at the time. The Supreme Court ultimately agreed with Metz's ruling and upheld his decision that these certificates did not have legal tender status due to their lack of authorization from Congress when they were issued in 1836.

In Robert Milnor, John Thompson, David Petrikin and Levi Woodbury v. George W. Metz, the Supreme Court was asked to decide whether a federal court had jurisdiction over a case involving an alleged breach of contract between two citizens from different states. The majority opinion held that the federal courts did not have jurisdiction in this case because it involved only private rights and no public interests were at stake. However, Justice McLean dissented on the grounds that Congress had given district courts exclusive original cognizance of all civil cases where one party is a citizen of another state or foreign country. He argued that if Congress intended for these types of cases to be decided by state courts instead then they would have said so explicitly in their legislation rather than granting exclusive original cognizance to district courts as they did with other matters such as admiralty law and copyright infringement suits. Therefore he concluded that since there was no explicit language excluding contracts between citizens from different states from being heard by federal district courts then those should be included under its purview as well