Frick v. Hartford Life Ins. Co.

• Decision Date: 27 November 1922
• Citation: 98 Conn. 251,119 A. 229
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court
• Parties: FRICK v. HARTFORD LIFE INS. CO.

119 A. 229

98 Conn. 251

FRICK v. HARTFORD LIFE INS. CO.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

November 27, 1922

Appeal from Superior Court, Hartford County; John P. Kellogg, Judge.

Suit by Peter C. Frick against the Hartford Life Insurance Company on a money judgment rendered against the defendant in a district court of the state of Iowa. Judgment for plaintiff to recover the amount of the Iowa judgment, with interest, and appeal by the defendant. No error.

The complaint alleges that on June 24, 1914, the district court of the state of Iowa, in an action pending between the plaintiff and the defendant, duly adjudged that the defendant should pay to the plaintiff $2,095.97, with interest at the rate of 6 per cent.; that an appeal was taken by the defendant to the Supreme Court of the state of Iowa, which affirmed the judgment (179 Iowa, 149, 159 N.W. 247), and that the defendant has not paid the same. Copies of the judgment and of the opinion of the Supreme Court of Iowa are annexed to the complaint. The answer admits that a " purported judgment" was rendered as alleged, that it was affirmed on appeal, and has not been paid by the defendant. These admissions are in the first three paragraphs of the answer. The fourth alleges that the defendant is a Connecticut corporation having its home office in Hartford and that the Iowa courts were without jurisdiction of the person of the defendant, or the subject-matter of the suit and without jurisdiction to grant the relief prayed for. The remaining paragraphs allege as reasons for the asserted lack of jurisdiction that the judgment was rendered in a suit in which the plaintiff alleged that the defendant, being a Connecticut corporation, had levied assessments against the plaintiff under three certificates of insurance in the safety fund department of the defendant company, in excess of the rate of assessment fixed by the certificates, and prayed for an accounting to determine the amount of the over assessment a judgment for the amount found due on such accounting, and an injunction restraining the defendant from thereafter levying assessments against the plaintiff in excess of the contract rate. It is then alleged that the defendant demurred to the bill on the sole ground that the court of Iowa was without jurisdiction of the person of the defendant or the subject-matter of the suit and was without jurisdiction to grant the relief prayed for; that the demurrer was overruled and the defendant elected to stand on its demurrer. The answer then goes on to allege that the suit was an attempted interference with the control and management of the internal affairs of the defendant at its domicile in Connecticut, and an attempted exercise of visitorial powers over a Connecticut corporation; that the courts of Connecticut had sole and exclusive jurisdiction over the subject-matter of the suit; that the judgment deprives the defendant of its property without due process of law; and that the judgment was not within the issues because the complaint prayed for a money judgment based upon a prior accounting and no such accounting was had, but the judgment was rendered without any accounting. By amendment an exemplified copy of the complete judgment roll in the district court of Iowa was made part of the answer.

The plaintiff then moved to expunge these allegations 5 to 10 inclusive, for the reason that they were " prolix, uncertain, argumentative, irrelevant, and immaterial," and were " merely statements of conclusions of law and an attempt to vary and explain the record of the proceedings in the district court of Iowa as shown by the judgment roll, Exhibit 1, attached to said answer."

The superior court (Haines, J.) granted the motion to expunge. When the cause came on for a hearing on the complaint, and the answer as deleted by the grant of the motion to expunge, the superior court (Kellogg. J.) excluded all evidence in support of the allegations in paragraph 4 that the Iowa courts were without jurisdiction, on the ground that all the essential allegations of fact contained in the complaint were admitted.

Arthur L. Shipman, of Hartford, for appellant.

Alvan Waldo Hyde, of Hartford, for appellee.

BEACH J.

Strictly speaking, the appeal presents only two questions; whether the motion to expunge was properly granted, and whether the issue of jurisdiction of the Iowa court was raised by the deleted answer. Taking, first, the motion to expunge. The complaint does not exhibit by reference the complete record of the Iowa district court, but only the decree dated June 24, 1914, and the opinion of the Supreme Court on the appeal from the judgment overruling the demurrer, which is not a conclusive record and therefore not the equivalent of a series of direct allegations stating fully the scope and nature of the litigation. In other words, the defense of lack of jurisdiction could not have been made by demurrer to the complaint. It follows that the defendant is entitled to make that defense by its answer, and for that purpose to state more fully than appeared in the complaint, by direct allegation or conclusive record, the exact nature and scope of the Iowa litigation. The paragraphs expunged were intended to do this, and by way of amplifying and verifying them the defendant annexed to its answer an exemplified copy of the complete judgment roll, Exhibit 1, which brought into the superior court for the first time a full and authentic record of the pleadings and the issues which were in fact litigated and determined. Evidently these allegations were not so wholly objectionable as to justify a ruling summarily wiping them out of existence.

They are not open to the objection of being merely conclusions of law. The defendant had the right to plead the complete judgment roll for the purpose of bringing the entire record before the superior court, and it might do this in either one of two ways; either without comment, or according to its supposed legal effect, and in the latter case it might, as it did, attempt to substantiate its averment by annexing a copy of the record itself. Practice Book 1908, rule 144. If the record was inconsistent with the averments, the plaintiff's remedy was by demurrer and not by motion.

The motion to expunge did not attack the judgment roll, which remained attached to the defendant's answer as an admittedly complete and authentic copy of the record of the Iowa court. That being so, there is no possible defense to this action except that the Iowa court was without jurisdiction to render the judgment sued on; and it follows that, if the record itself shows on its face that the Iowa court did have jurisdiction, then it would serve no useful purpose to send the case back to have the erroneous ruling on the point of pleading corrected.

The question before us is much simpler than that originally presented to the Iowa court by the defendant's demurrer, for that court had to consider all the latent possibilities of the litigation; whether, for example, it might find itself unable to state the account prayed for, or unable to enforce the injunction prayed for, because it had no visitorial powers over a foreign corporation and no power to reach the defendant's books and records in Connecticut, and no power to regulate the management of its internal affairs. In such cases, when the relief asked for suggests the probability that the court may be unable to enforce its decrees, or that complete justice cannot be done except in the courts of the domicile of the foreign corporation, the jurisdiction may be declined, though the defendant is within the jurisdiction of the court. Sauerbrunn v. Hartford Life Ins. Co., 220 N.Y. 363, 115 N.E. 1001; State ex rel. Hartford Life Ins. Co. v. Shain, 245 Mo. 78, 149 S.W. 479.

When on the other hand, the court is of opinion that it can do complete justice and that the relief asked for may be granted without a futile effort to exercise visitorial powers over a foreign corporation, it will exercise the jurisdiction, as was done in the instant case and in Hartford Life Ins. Co. v. Douds (Ohio) 136 N.E. 274. The cases cited are selected from among many others bearing on the point, because each of them is substantially identical with the instant case, and in each of them the question whether the court should or...