Inverness Coca-Cola Bottling Co. v. McDaniel, COCA-COLA

• Citation: 78 So.2d 100
• Decision Date: 21 January 1955
• Docket Number: COCA-COLA
• Parties: INVERNESSBOTTLING COMPANY, a corporation, Appellant, v. Lottie McDANIEL, Appellee.
• Court: United States State Supreme Court of Florida

Page 100

78 So.2d 100

INVERNESS COCA-COLA BOTTLING COMPANY, a corporation, Appellant, v. Lottie McDANIEL, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Florida, En Banc.

Jan. 21, 1955.

Rehearing Denied March 10, 1955.

Shackleford, Farrior, Shannon & Stallings, Tampa, for appellant.

Robert L. Pursifull, Tampa, for appellee.

HOBSON, Justice.

Appellee, Lottie McDaniel, sued the Inverness Coca-Cola Bottling Company (hereinafter 'Inverness') and the Tampa Coca-Cola Bottling Company ('Tampa') in the Hillsborough County Circuit Court. Both defendants are Florida corporations. Tampa does business in Hillsborough County, and Inverness does business in Citrus and Hernando Counties. Each defendant has its principal place of business in the city after which it is named, and it was so alleged in the complaint.

The complaint, which was filed on February 26, 1953, further alleged that the plaintiff, through the negligence of the defendants and by reason of their breach of warranty of fitness, had been injured internally by broken glass which she had swallowed from a bottle of Coca-Cola purchased from Milton's City Market in Brooksville, Florida. By summary judgment, the case was dismissed as to Tampa before trial. The case against Inverness was tried before a jury, and resulted in a verdict for the plaintiff in the amount of $1,000, upon which the judgment appealed from was entered.

The sole contention made here by appellant Inverness is that the trial court erred in deciding the question of venue adversely to Inverness under the facts of this case. Because of the view we take, it will be necessary to review the relevant points of the pleadings filed by the plaintiff and by Inverness.

The complaint set up, inter alia, the existence of an agency relationship between the two defendants, alleging that Tampa 'constituted and appointed' Inverness its 'agent for bottling and delivering said drink to the public for consumption by agency agreement of the granting of an exclusive franchise' and by allowing Inverness 'to hold itself out as a representative of' Tampa and 'to prepare, bottle, and deliver said coca cola as aforesaid' and that Tampa, 'acting by, through and with their agent as aforesaid * * * Inverness' negligently delivered the offending bottle to the market where the plaintiff purchased it. The foregoing quotations are suggestive, but not exhaustive, of the allegations of agency which appear throughout the complaint, and which, while they were not artfully drawn, were sufficient by modern pleading standards. See Pacific Mutual Life Ins. Co. of California v. Barton, 5 Cir., 50 F.2d 362, and Rule 10(a) of the 1950 Florida Common Law Rules, 30 F.S.A.

On March 17, 1953 Inverness filed a motion to dismiss the complaint upon two grounds: (1) insufficiency, and (2)

'That the Complaint on its face shows that the Tampa Coca Cola Bottling Company, a Florida corporation, is improperly joined as a party defendant and that when the Tampa Coca Cola Bottling Company is dismissed as a party defendant, this Complaint against the Inverness Coca Cola Bottling Company shows on its face that Hillsborough County, Florida is not the proper venue but that the Complaint should be filed in Citrus County.'

This motion was denied on April 16, 1953, and Inverness was given twenty days to plead to the complaint. It will be noted that this second, or venue, ground of the Inverness motion was predicated wholly upon improper joinder of Tampa. This could have meant only that agency was insufficiently alleged, which was properly held not to have been the case. There was no error in denying the motion. F.S. § 46.02, F.S.A., provides:

'Suits against tow or more defendants residing in different counties (or justices' districts) may be brought in any county or district in which any defendant resides.'

This section places a qualification upon F.S. § 46.04, F.S.A., which gives a domestic corporation the privilege of being sued 'only in the county (or justice's district) where such corporation shall have or usually keep an office for the transaction of its customary business, or where the cause of action accrued, or where the property in litigation is located * * *.' L.B. McLeod Const. Co. v. State, 106 Fla. 805, 143 So. 594. In the McLeod case we said that under the statutes quoted, 'where two corporations are otherwise properly joined as defendants in an action, the action can be maintained against both corporate defendants in a county in which one of the defendants, if a domestic corporation, 'shall have or usually keep an office for the transaction of its customary business". 143 So. 594, 596. For aught that appeared from the pleadings in this case, the two corporate defendants were 'otherwise properly joined', and the trial court's ruling was correct upon this ground. Moreover, even if the fact that the two corporate defendants were not properly joined had been ascertainable from the face of the complaint, the motion of Inverness to dismiss for improper venue should still have been denied. The complaint affirmatively showed that the Inverness Coca Cola Bottling Company was a domestic corporation 'having its principal place of business in Inverness, Citrus County, Florida.' But this allegation does not show that venue in Hillsborough County would necessarily be improper as to defendant Inverness, even if Inverness were the only defendant in the case, because it does not negative the possibility that Inverness has 'an office for the transaction of its customary business' in Hillsborough County, F.S. § 46.04, F.S.A., supra, regardless of the location of its principal place of business, and if such were the fact, venue in Hillsborough County would have been proper as to Inverness. By the plain terms of the statute, venue does not depend upon the location of the principal place of business, but can rest upon the location of a branch office....