York Mfg Co v. Colley
| Decision Date | 20 May 1918 |
| Docket Number | No. 200,200 |
| Citation | 247 U.S. 21,11 A. L. R. 611,38 S.Ct. 430,62 L.Ed. 963 |
| Parties | YORK MFG. CO. v. COLLEY et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Mr. N. C. Abbott, of Houston, Tex., for plaintiff in error.
The York Manufacturing Company, a Pennsylvania corporation, sued for the amount due upon a contract for the purchase of ice-manufacturing machinery and to foreclose a lien upon the same. By answer the defendants alleged that the plaintiff was a foreign corporation; that it maintained an office and transacted business in Texas without having obtained a permit therefor and was hence under Texas statutes not authorized to prosecute the suit in the courts of the state and a dismissal was prayed. In reply the plaintiff averred that the contract sued on was interstate commerce and that the state statute if held to apply was repugnant to the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States. At the trial it was shown without dispute that the contract covered an ice plant guaranteed to produce three of ice a day, consisting of gas compression pumps, a compressor, ammonia condensers, freezing tank and cans, evaporating coils, a brine agitator and other machinery and accessories, including apparatus for utilizing exhaust steam for making distilled water for filling the ice cans. These parts of machinery, it was provided, were to be shipped from Pennsylvania to the point of delivery in Texas and were there to be erected and connected. This work, it was stipulated, was to be done under the supervision of an engineer to be sent by the York Manufacturing Company for whose services a fixed per diem charge of $6 was to be paid by the purchasers and who should have the assistance of mechanics furnished by the purchasers, the supervision to include not only the erection but the submitting of the machinery to a practical test in operation before the obligation to finally receive it would arise. It was moreover undisputed that these provisions were carried out; that about three weeks were consumed in erecting the machinery and about a week in practically testing it, when after a demonstration of its successful operation it was accepted by the purchasers.
The trial court, not doubting that the contract of sale was interstate commerce, nevertheless concluding that the stipulation as to supervision by an engineer to be sent by the seller was intrastate commerce and wholly separable from the interstate transaction, held that the seller by car- rying out that provision had engaged in local business in the state, and, as the permit required by the state statutes had not been secured, gave effect to the statutes and dismissed the suit. The case is here to review the action of the court below sustaining such conclusion, its judgment being that of the court of last resort of the state in consequence of the refusal of the Supreme Court of the state to allow a writ of error.
Referring to a previous ruling (Leschen & Sons Rope Co. v. Moser [Tex. Civ. App.] 159 S. W. 1018), in which it had held that the performance by a contractor of the duty of supervising the construction of a compley system of tramways did not constitute a doing of business within the state because it was relevant to and a part of the main contract for the material from which the road was to be constructed which was interstate commerce, the court below concluded that that case had been by it mistakenly decided, and therefore should be overruled and not applied in this. The conclusion as to previous error committed, the court said, was persuasively the result of the ruling in Browning v. Waycross, 233 U. S. 16, 34 Sup. Ct. 578, 58 L. Ed. 828, which it treated as here conclusively determining that the performance of the contract for the supervision by the engineer was purely intrastate commerce and subject to be treated as such although it formed a part of the stipulatio § of the principal contract of sale conceded to be interstate commerce.
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