The German Insurance Company of Freeport v. The First National Bank of Boonville

• Decision Date: 10 April 1897
• Docket Number: 9624
• Citation: 58 Kan. 86,48 P. 592
• Parties: THE GERMAN INSURANCE COMPANY OF FREEPORT, ILLINOIS, v. THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF BOONVILLE, NEW YORK
• Court: Kansas Supreme Court

48 P. 592

58 Kan. 86

THE GERMAN INSURANCE COMPANY OF FREEPORT, ILLINOIS, v. THE FIRST NATIONAL BANK OF BOONVILLE, NEW YORK

No. 9624

Supreme Court of Kansas

April 10, 1897

Decided January, 1897.

Error from Shawnee District Court. Hon. Z. T. Hazen, Judge.

Judgment affirmed.

Jetmore & Jetmore, for plaintiff in error.

Rossington Smith & Dallas and Clifford Histed, for defendant in error.

OPINION

ALLEN, J.

The First National Bank of Boonville, New York, obtained in the Circuit Court of Shawnee County a judgment for twenty-three hundred dollars against the Western Investment Loan and Trust Company, a Kansas corporation. Execution having been issued on the judgment and returned unsatisfied, this action was brought against the German Insurance Company of Freeport Illinois, to charge it as a stockholder of the Loan and Trust Company. It was alleged in the petition that the Insurance Company had duly subscribed for fifty shares of stock of the par value of fifty dollars each, on which it had paid two thousand dollars; that there remained unpaid five hundred dollars on the subscription, and that the defendant was liable in the further sum of twenty-five hundred dollars under its statutory liability. A summons was issued and served on Joseph Groll and J. S. McKittrick, partners as Groll & McKittrick, managing agents of the defendant and chief officers of its agency at Topeka. The defendant appeared specially, and, on various grounds, moved to set aside the summons and the service thereof. The motion was overruled. The defendant made no further appearance in the case, and judgment was thereupon rendered in favor of the plaintiff for twenty-five hundred dollars and costs.

It is contended that the court had no jurisdiction over the defendant, and that the service on Groll & McKittrick was void. Section 69 of the Code of Civil Procedure reads "Where the defendant is an incorporated insurance company, and the action is brought in a county in which there is an agency thereof, the service may be upon the chief officer of such agency." It is contended that Groll & McKittrick were not chief officers of an agency, within the meaning of the statute, but that they were mere soliciting agents. Section 53 of the Code provides: "If said defendant be a foreign insurance company, the action may be brought in any county where the cause, or some part thereof, arose." It is urged that, under these provisions of the statute, suits against a foreign insurance company can only be maintained on insurance contracts; that both the parties to this action are foreign corporations; that the plaintiff's cause of action is not based on any contract of insurance entered into in this State, and that our courts can acquire no jurisdiction over the defendant without service of process on one of its principal officers. The old theory that a corporation resides only in the state of its creation no longer obtains. It is now held that, for the purpose of conferring jurisdiction on the courts, a corporation is present in any place where it transacts its business; and that service of process may be made on its agents through whom,...