Missouri Pac Co v. Clarendon Boat Oar Co

• Decision Date: 27 February 1922
• Docket Number: No. 102,102
• Citation: Missouri Pac Co v. Clarendon Boat Oar Co, 257 U.S. 533, 42 S.Ct. 210, 66 L.Ed. 354 (1922)
• Parties: MISSOURI PAC. R. CO. v. CLARENDON BOAT OAR CO
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

257 U.S. 533

42 S.Ct. 210

66 L.Ed. 354

MISSOURI PAC. R. CO.

v CLARENDON BOAT OAR CO.

No. 102.

Argued Jan. 20, 1922.

Decided Feb. 27, 1922.

Messrs. Allan Sholars and Henry Bernstein, both of Monroe, La., for plaintiff in error.

Mr. J. C. Theus, of Monroe, La., for defendant in error.

Mr. Chief Justice TAFT delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a writ of error to the judgment of the highest court of the state of Louisiana to which the case could be taken. The plaintiff, the Missouri Pacific Railroad Company, a Missouri corporation, sued the defendant company, the Clarendon Boat Oar Company, a New York company, for damages in the district court of Richland parish, for the breach of an affreightment contract entered into in the state of Arkansas and to be performed in that state. The defendant appeared solely to except to the jurisdiction. The district court sustained the exception, and, on appeal to the Court of Appeal of the Second Circuit, this ruling was affirmed and the cause dismissed. The Supreme Court of the state refused to entertain an appeal.

Act 243 of 1912, p. 543, and Act 267 of 1914, p. 532, of the Annual Laws of Louisiana, provide that service on foreign corporations may be made on any agent which the corporation has designated, and require that every foreign corporation doing business in the state shall file a written declaration with the Secretary of the State, showing its domicile and the place or places where it is to do business and designating its agent, resident in the parish where its business is to be done, and that service on said agent, whether personal or domiciliary, shall be a valid service on it. The Court of Appeal in this case held, following what it deemed to be the holding by the Louisiana Supreme Court in the case of Watkins v. North American Land & Timber Co., 106 La. 621, 31 South. 172, 87 Am. St. Rep. 309, that the Louisiana statute was not intended to give the state courts jurisdiction over foreign corporations by service on agents appointed thereunder, in transitory actions arising in another state. The action of the Supreme Court in refusing to entertain an appeal in this cause shows this to be the authoritative construction of the statute by the state courts.

This writ of error is based on the theory that the statute of Louisiana, thus construed, denies the plaintiff in error due process of law and the equal protection of the laws in contravention of the Fourteenth Amendment to the federal Constitution. In the Watkins Case, supra, the Supreme Court of the state held that the provisions of the foreign corporation law furnished equal opportunity to residents and nonresidents to sue foreign corporations. The contention comes down to this, therefore, that it is a lack of due process for a state statute of procedure to fail to furnish a person, within the limits of the state, power to sue a nonresident corporation and take judgment for a cause of action arising in another state. Under section 2 of article 4 of the federal Constitution, the citizens of each state are entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states. This secures...