King v. Kentucky Board of Pharmacy

• Decision Date: 22 January 1914
• Citation: 157 Ky. 52,162 S.W. 561
• Parties: KING v. KENTUCKY BOARD OF PHARMACY et al.
• Court: Kentucky Court of Appeals

162 S.W. 561

157 Ky. 52

KING v. KENTUCKY BOARD OF PHARMACY et al.

Court of Appeals of Kentucky.

January 22, 1914

Appeal from Circuit Court, Jefferson County, Common Pleas Branch Fourth Division.

Mandamus by C. C. King against R. H. White and others, individually and as members of the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy. Judgment for defendants, and plaintiff appeals. Reversed.

Ernest Woodward, of Hartford, for appellant.

Edward Bloomfield, of Louisville, for appellees.

HANNAH J.

The appellant, C. C. King, on October 13, 1913, instituted in the Jefferson circuit court a mandamus proceeding against R. H White, C. L. Diehl, Addison Dimmitt, G. O. Patterson, and J C. Gilbert, individually and as members of the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy, seeking to require them to issue to him a pharmacist's certificate of registration permitting him to practice his profession in this state. Notice of the motion was served on Patterson, Gilbert, Dimmitt and Diehl in Jefferson county, and on White in Montgomery, the county of his residence. The defendants entered a motion to quash the return on the notice and by special demurrer made objection to the jurisdiction of the Jefferson circuit court upon the ground that the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy is a corporation or quasi corporation; that R. H. White, the president and chief officer of the board, resides and was served with process in Montgomery county; and that said board has no office in Jefferson county, although it holds in Louisville in that county four meetings each year as required by section 2622, Kentucky Statutes. The lower court sustained the motion to quash the return on the notice, sustained the special demurrer, and dismissed the petition, and plaintiff appeals.

The question presented is: Must an action against the members comprising the Kentucky Board of Pharmacy be brought in the county in which the president of the said board resides; the board having no office or place of business in any county? In other words, is such action governed as to venue by section 72 of the Civil Code? In support of its contention that section 72 governs the venue of this proceeding, appellee cites the case of Gross v. Kentucky Board of Managers etc., 105 Ky. 842, 49 S.W. 458, 20 Ky. Law Rep. 1418, 43 L. R. A. 703, and Henderson County Board of Health v. Ward, Judge, 107 Ky. 477, 54 S.W. 725, 21 Ky. Law Rep. 1193. In the Gross Case the only question was whether the board of managers of the World's Columbian Exposition could be sued as such board, upon a contract entered into by it as such board, and this court held that, as that board was vested with corporate powers, it could be sued for its corporate acts, saying: "The only reasonable conclusion is that the board of managers, to whom the $100,000 was committed to carry out the object of the act, was intended to be, to the extent of the funds put in its hands, at least a quasi corporation. *** It was an agency of the state, but it was also vested with corporate powers, and in its corporate capacity it may be sued for its corporate acts, just as any other corporation." But no question of venue or jurisdiction was therein involved. In the case of Henderson County Board of Health v. Ward, Judge, supra, the only question before the court was whether a court of chancery could compel the representatives of the county to deliver, into the custody of the said board of health, the county pest house and patients, during an epidemic of smallpox; and this court said that: "While it is not by statute made a corporation, the board of health is created...