Roll-O-Matic, Inc. v. J. B. Marshall, Inc.

• Decision Date: 05 February 1937
• Docket Number: No. 429.,429.
• Parties: ROLL-O-MATIC, Inc. v. J. B. MARSHALL, Inc.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

189 A. 661

ROLL-O-MATIC, Inc.

v. J. B. MARSHALL, Inc.

No. 429.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

Feb. 5, 1937.

Action by Roll-O-Matic, Inc., against J. B. Marshall, Inc., wherein the defendant sought to set aside service of summons and complaint.

Attempted service of process set aside.

Hodes & Hodes and Irving L. Hodes, all of Newark, for plaintiff.

Fred Eichmann, of Union City, and Julius J. Seiden, of Jersey City, for defendant.

Argued January term, 1937, before TRENCHARD, BODINE, and HEHER, JJ.

BODINE, Justice.

The defendant, a Michigan corporation, seeks to have set aside the service of a summons and complaint. The action was brought to recover upon three checks drawn by the defendant upon a bank in Detroit, Mich, payment having been stopped. The process was served upon J. B. Marshall, president of the defendant company, while he was at plaintiff's place of business, 209 Parkhurst street, Newark, N. J. The defendant's only place of business is at 3726 Woodward avenue, Detroit. All its contracts, either of purchase or sale, are made there and no business whatever is transacted in this state. The machines, for which the checks in suit were given, were bought from plaintiff's representative in Michigan.

The defendant's president, having come on to New York at the invitation of one of the plaintiff's officers, visited their show room in Newark and discussed new models of machines and the adjustment of the amount due on the outstanding checks for which the suit was brought. The parties not reaching an agreement, the process was served.

Justice Elmer in Moulin v. Insurance Co, 24 N.J.Law, 222, at page 234, said: "Any natural person who goes into another state carries along with him all his personal liabilities; and there is quite as much reason that a corporation which chooses to open an office and transact its business, or to authorize contracts to be made in another state, should be regarded as thereby voluntarily submitting itself to the action of the laws of that state, as well in reference to the mode of commencing suits against it, as to the interpretation of the contracts so made. But I am quite prepared to say, that where a corporation confines its business operations to the state which has chartered it, a law of another state, which sanctions the service of process upon one of its officers or members accidentally within its jurisdiction is unreasonable, and so contrary to natural justice and to the principles of international law that the courts of other states ought not to sanction it. In such a case, a president or other officer ought not to be considered as carrying his official character along with him." That case dealt with a New York statute...