General Inv. Co. v. Lake Shore & M.S. Ry. Co.

• Citation: 226 F. 976
• Decision Date: 30 June 1915
• Docket Number: 287.
• Court: United States District Courts. 6th Circuit. United States District Court of Northern District of Ohio
• Parties: GENERAL INV. CO. v. LAKE SHORE & M.S. RY. CO., et al.

226 F. 976

GENERAL INV. CO. v. LAKE SHORE & M.S. RY. CO., et al.

No. 287.

United States District Court, N.D. Ohio, Eastern Division.

June 30, 1915

Henry Fauver, McGraw & Thomsen, of Cleveland, Ohio, for plaintiff.

Chas T. Lewis, of Toledo, Ohio, and F. J. Jerome, of Cleveland Ohio, for defendant New York Cent. & H.R.R. Co.

KILLITS District Judge.

Because of facts conceded in this case we are not called upon to construe section 11288, General Code of Ohio, under which service was attempted to be made upon the movant in this case, the New York Central & Hudson River Railroad Company by delivering a copy of the summons to the agent of the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company at Cleveland. The genesis of this act shows that the original intention of the Legislature was not to permit the bringing into court of a railway corporation by service upon a ticket or freight agent of the company, except in a county in which such railroad is located or through which it passed; and, if it is correct to say that the statute in its present form does allow such actions to be brought, it is because, through the process of amendment and codification a semicolon has supplanted a comma, whereby an enlargement of opportunity for service is effected beyond the conception of the original framers of the law. If we were compelled to pass upon the question, we would be constrained to give considerable effect to the principle announced in Allen v. Russell, 39 Ohio St. 336, among other cases, that no radical change of meaning was intended in revision or amendment, unless the purpose is clearly manifested by a change of language; and we should further consider that other standard canon of construction that, unless compelled by specific terms of the act, an unreasonable meaning should not be given to it. Against these two considerations, it may well be said that the slight differences in punctuating effect between a comma and a semicolon are negligible.

The court's duty in this case, however, is controlled to the end of granting the motion to dismiss the New York Central &amp Hudson River Railroad Company for want of proper service, because it is conceded that the moving defendant was not at all located within the state of Ohio, and that the person upon whom service was made, being the ticket agent for the Lake Shore & Michigan Southern Railway Company, was no more an agent for the New York Central & Hudson River...