Haas-Phillips Produce Co. v. Lee & Edwards

• Decision Date: 11 November 1920
• Docket Number: 3 Div. 470
• Citation: 205 Ala. 137,87 So. 200
• Parties: HAAS-PHILLIPS PRODUCE CO. v. LEE & EDWARDS.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

87 So. 200

205 Ala. 137

HAAS-PHILLIPS PRODUCE CO. v. LEE & EDWARDS.

3 Div. 470

Supreme Court of Alabama

November 11, 1920

Rehearing Denied Dec. 18, 1920

Appeal from Circuit Court, Montgomery County; Leon McCord, Judge.

Action by Lee & Edwards against the Haas-Phillips Produce Company, a domestic corporation, on a judgment recovered in 1916 in a circuit court of general jurisdiction in the state of Florida. Judgment for the plaintiffs, and the defendant appeals. Transferred from Court of Appeals under Acts 1911 p. 450, § 6. Affirmed.

Steiner Crum & Weil, of Montgomery, for appellant.

Weil Stakely & Vardaman, of Montgomery, for appellees.

SOMERVILLE J.

It has now become elementary law that any judgment rendered by the court of a sister state may be collaterally attacked and avoided for want of jurisdiction of subject-matter or person when it is sought to be enforced in a court of any other state. A personal judgment, whether against an individual or a corporation, must be grounded upon jurisdiction of the defendant's person lawfully acquired. Lucas v. Bank of Darien, 2 Stew. 280, 306; Puckett v. Pope, 3 Ala. 552; L. & N.R.R. Co. v. Nash, 118 Ala. 477, 23 So. 825, 41 L.R.A. 331, 72 Am.St.Rep. 181; Ingram v. Ingram, 143 Ala. 129, 42 So. 24, 111 Am.St.Rep. 31; Joseph & Bros. v. Hoffman, 173 Ala. 568, 56 So. 216.

This was a fundamental principle of the common law. 15 R.C.L. p. 847, § 321. It is now fixed in our jurisprudence by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution, as construed by the federal Supreme Court, and cannot be denied by virtue of either the decisions or statutes of a state.

Under the agreed facts exhibited by the record in this case, the service of process from the Florida court on the president of the defendant corporation while temporarily sojourning in Florida did not avail as a personal service upon the corporation, and therefore could not support a personal judgment against it. This has been settled by the highest authority. Riverside Mills v. Menefee, 237 U.S. 189, 35 Sup.Ct. 579, 59 L.Ed. 910. In that case it was said by Mr. Chief Justice White:

"We content ourselves with saying that it results from them [the decisions reviewed] that it is indubitably established that the courts of one state may not, without violating the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, render a judgment against a corporation organized under the laws of another state where such corporation has not come into such state for the purpose of doing business therein, or has done no business therein, or has no property therein, or has no qualified agent therein upon whom process may be served, and that the mere fact that an officer of a corporation may temporarily be in the state or even permanently reside therein, if not there for the purpose of transacting business for the corporation or vested with authority by the corporation to transact business in such state, affords no basis for acquiring jurisdiction or escaping the denial of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment which would result from decreeing against the corporation upon a service had upon on such an officer under such circumstances."

In the Menefee Case, after the defendant's motion in impeachment of the jurisdiction had been overruled by the trial court, the defendant answered, and there was a trial on the merits followed by a judgment for the plaintiff. The defendant appealed from that judgment to the Supreme Court of North Carolina, insisting upon the invalidity of the service, and from a judgment of that court affirming the action of the trial court the defendant, a Virginia corporation, appealed to the federal Supreme Court. The attack on the North Carolina judgment was made directly by appeal, and in that vital respect that case differs from the case in hand. If in that case no appeal had been taken from the judgment of the trial court, or from the judgment of affirmance in the state Supreme Court, and the question had reached the federal Supreme Court by appeal from the judgment of a Virginia court sustaining the North Carolina judgment against collateral attack, we apprehend that the original judgment would not have been impeached for want of jurisdiction.

And if in the instant case the defendant corporation had confined its appearance in the Florida court to an effort to dismiss the proceeding for want of jurisdiction, and, the judgment being adverse, it had thereupon declined to appear generally and submit the cause for adjudication upon its merits, it seems clear that it could afterwards have successfully impeached any judgment rendered against it by the Florida court when sought to be enforced in the court of another state in a collateral suit.

But, having yielded to the judgment of the Florida court on the question of jurisdiction of its person by appearing and answering to the merits of the complaint, it must, upon sound principle, and we think upon sound authority also, be held to have conclusively waived the original failure in the service of process, and to have become provisionally bound by the judgment thereupon rendered--provisionally, that is, upon its reversal by direct appeal.

The effect of such an appearance and the validity of the judgment rendered thereon on appeal was fully considered by the Supreme Court of North Dakota in ...