Vandevoir v. Southeastern Greyhound Lines, 8758.
| Decision Date | 11 March 1946 |
| Docket Number | No. 8758.,8758. |
| Citation | 152 F.2d 150 |
| Parties | VANDEVOIR v. SOUTHEASTERN GREYHOUND LINES. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit |
H. B. Aikman and Ernest M. Wright, both of Terre Haute, Ind., for appellant.
Frederick P. Bamberger (of Ortmeyer, Bamberger, Ortmeyer and Foreman), of Evansville, Ind., and Frank J. Crawford (of Cooper, Royse, Gambill & Crawford), of Terre Haute, Ind., for appellee.
Before SPARKS, MAJOR, and KERNER, Circuit Judges.
Writ of Certiorari Denied March 11, 1946. See 66 S.Ct. 811.
Plaintiff seeks to reverse a judgment for defendant in an action brought to recover damages for injuries sustained while a passenger on defendant's bus.
The facts are not in dispute. Defendant is a corporation organized under the laws of the State of Kentucky and has its home office and principal place of business at Lexington, Kentucky. Its business is that of a common carrier of passengers. It has a certificate of authority to operate an interstate motor vehicle transportation system in Indiana, but it is not qualified as a foreign corporation to transact intrastate business within the State of Indiana. At Evansville, Indiana, it has a garage, a resident agent, a local manager, and a number of employees to service its buses. Plaintiff is a citizen of Indiana, and the amount in controversy exceeds $3,000. June 4, 1942, at Evansville, she became a passenger on one of defendant's buses. She was injured in the State of Tennessee while enroute to Mississippi. She commenced her action on February 18, 1944.
The District Court concluded that the cause of action arose in the State of Tennessee; that defendant was a citizen and resident of the State of Kentucky; and that under the laws of Kentucky the prosecution of the action was barred after one year from the date when the action accrued.
Section 2516, Carroll's Kentucky Statutes, now codified as § 413.140, Ky.Rev.St. 1942, provides: "An action for an injury to the person of the plaintiff * * * shall be commenced within one year next after the cause of action accrued, and not thereafter."
The Civil Procedure Act of Indiana, § 2-606, Burns Ind. St.1933, provides that: "The time during which the defendant is a nonresident of the state * * * shall not be computed in any of the periods of limitation; but when a cause has been fully barred by the laws of the place where the defendant resided, such bar shall be the same defense here as though it had arisen in this state: Provided, That the provisions of this section shall be construed to apply only to causes of action arising without this state."
Plaintiff insists that the quoted Indiana statute is not available as a defense, because defendant is not a nonresident. The argument is that a corporation may be a citizen of one state and a resident of another, and that even though defendant was incorporated in and was a citizen of Kentucky, it was engaged in business in Indiana and must be regarded as a resident of Indiana, and cites a large number of cases. It will not be necessary to discuss these cases for the reason that they are either distinguishable upon the facts or hold that a corporation by transacting business in the state where the case was commenced was amenable to process in that state. No such question is involved in this case.
Defendant contends that it is a resident only of the state where it is incorporated and that the law of limitations of the State of Kentucky governs the rights of the parties.
Our problem is, did the fact that defendant operated an interstate motor vehicle transportation system in Indiana make it a resident of that state within the purview of § 2-606? The Indiana courts, with this problem in mind, have not dealt with the question.
Defendant argues that the legal existence, the home, the domicile, the habitat, the residence, and citizenship of a corporation can only be in the state by which it was created, notwithstanding that it may lawfully do business in other states and subject itself to the processes of those states. With this contention we are impelled to agree, since many decisions of various courts have so held.
A corporation can have no legal existence outside of the sovereignty by which it was created. Its place of residence is there, and can be nowhere else. Unlike a natural person, it cannot...
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Hark v. Antilles Airboats, Inc., Civ. No. 476/1972.
...Inc., 316 F.2d 91 (5th Cir. 1963); Maynard v. Eastern Airlines, Inc., 178 F.2d 139 (2nd Cir. 1949); Vandevoir v. Southeastern Greyhound Lines, Inc., 152 F.2d 150 (7th Cir. 1945); 8 Am.Jur.2d Aviation § 67. The Third Circuit cases of Weinstein v. Eastern Airlines, Inc., 316 F.2d 758 (3rd Cir......
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State ex inf. Dalton v. Riss & Co.
...to the Missouri statutes, is stated in 20 C.J.S. Corporations Sec. 1794, page 17, and also followed in Vandevoir v. Southeastern Greyhound Lines, 7 Cir., 152 F.2d 150, 152; Western Express Co. v. Wallace, 144 Ohio St. 612, 60 N.E.2d 312; and State v. Garford Trucking, Inc., 4 N.J. 346, 72 A......
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Hark v. Antilles Airboats, Inc., Civil No. 476-1972
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