Simpson v. Thiele, Inc., Civ. A. No. 4147.
| Decision Date | 22 June 1972 |
| Docket Number | Civ. A. No. 4147. |
| Citation | 344 F. Supp. 7 |
| Parties | Robert E. SIMPSON, Plaintiff, v. THIELE, INC., a Pennsylvania corporation, Defendant. |
| Court | U.S. District Court — District of Delaware |
Howard M. Berg and Julius Komissaroff, Wilmington, Del., for plaintiff.
Roger P. Sanders, Wilmington, Del., for defendant.
Plaintiff, a resident of Delaware, sued defendant, a Pennsylvania corporation having its principal place of business in Pennsylvania, for personal injuries alleged to have been sustained when his right arm became caught between the hydraulic powered platen and the front wall of a "packer" manufactured by the defendant. The packer had been purchased by plaintiff's employer, Harvey & Knotts, Inc., for use in refuse collection. The injury occurred in Delaware while plaintiff was collecting and loading the refuse into a garbage truck for Knotts. The trailer portion of the garbage truck was the packer. Plaintiff alleges that the defendant is liable to him under various theories of product liability, including among others, negligence and breach of warranty. Jurisdiction is based upon diversity of citizenship and a controversy involving in excess of $10,000.
The defendant is a foreign corporation which is not qualified to do business in Delaware. Service upon such a corporation under certain circumstances is provided for in 8 Del.C. § 382. It states in pertinent part:
The defendant has moved to quash the service of process and dismiss the complaint on the ground that this Court lacks jurisdiction over the person of the defendant because no valid service of process has been made on the defendant.
Jurisdiction having been challenged, the burden rests on the plaintiff to sustain it.
From a mechanical standpoint, all of the steps contemplated by the statute (unimportant to detail) have been carried out. The question is whether the statute is applicable to defendant.
In order for the statute to authorize service on a non-qualified foreign corporation (1) the corporation must be transacting business generally in Delaware, and (2) the suit must arise or grow out of a particular business transaction which occurred in the State. Unless both of these circumstances are present authority to make service under § 382 is lacking.
No Delaware decision is inconsistent with this interpretation.* It is supported by the plain terms of the statute as well as the...
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Hill v. Equitable Trust Co.
...it also requires that the civil action in question arise or grow out of the business conducted in this state. See Simpson v. Thiele, Inc., 344 F.Supp. 7, 8 (D.Del.1972). 10 Del.C. § 3104 (c)(4) does not have this second requirement and is therefore an expansion beyond § 382. Magid v. Marcal......
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Harmon v. Eudaily
...is challenged by a motion to dismiss, the plaintiff has the burden to show a basis for long-arm jurisdiction. Simpson v. Thiele, D.Del., 344 F.Supp. 7 (1972). However, this burden is met by a threshold Prima facie showing that jurisdiction is conferred by the statute, Cohan v. Municipal Lea......
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Magid v. Marcal Paper Mills, Inc.
...Delaware and (2) the civil action in question arises or grows out of any business transacted by Marcal in this state. Simpson v. Thiele, Inc., 344 F.Supp. 7 (D.Del.1972). Addressing the second requirement first, this Court is guided by its previous holding that the "arising out of" requirem......
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Mid-Atlantic Mach. & Fabric, Inc. v. Chesapeake Shipbuilding, Inc.
...v. Haines and Co., Inc., supra; Delaware Lead Const. Co. v. Young Industries, Inc., D.Del., 360 F.Supp. 1244 (1973); Simpson v. Thiele, Inc., D.Del., 344 F.Supp. 7 (1972), are not determinative of this Since the rewrite of § 3104 in 1978, however, the Delaware courts have been forced to con......