Young v. Morrison

• Decision Date: 15 June 1964
• Docket Number: No. 22502,22502
• Citation: 137 S.E.2d 456,220 Ga. 127
• Parties: Patricia Fay YOUNG et al. v. A. B. MORRISON et al.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

Page 456

137 S.E.2d 456

220 Ga. 127

Patricia Fay YOUNG et al. v. A. B. MORRISON et al.

No. 22502.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

June 15, 1964.

Rehearing Denied July 6, 1964.

Syllabus by the Court

Where persons were bona fide residents of Georgia when they were involved in an automobile collision but thereafter moved to Florida where they now reside, it would constitute a denial of due process as guaranteed by the State and Federal Constitutions to allow them to now be sued in a Georgia court by serving the Secretary of State with such suit, and it was error to overrule their plea to the jurisdiction invoking the Constitutions and alleging that Ga.L.1957, pp. 649, 650 (Code Ann. § 68-808) which authorized such suit, is unconstitutional and void.

Two former residents of Georgia, now residents of the State of Florida, were sued jointly with others in a Georgia court on account of injuries allegedly sustained by the plaintiff's wife, which arose out of a collision between an automobile operated by her and one operated by the nonresident wife of the other nonresident sued, both of whom were residents of Georgia at the time of the alleged tort. Service was purportedly effected on the two nonresidents by serving the Secretary of State of Georgia pursuant to the provisions of the Nonresident Motorists' Act (Ga.L.1937, p. 732 et seq., as amended by Ga.L.1957, pp. 649, 650; Code Ann. § 68-808). The nonresidents filed a plea in abatement, traverse of service, and a plea to the jurisdiction, predicated upon the fact that at the time of the tort complained of by the plaintiff they were residents of Georgia, subsequently moving to Florida, and that the provisions of law purportedly permitting service upon them by the expedient of serving the Secretary of State, as their agent, were unconstitutional and void for a number of reasons set out in their pleas. After a hearing of the pleas in which it was stipulated that the facts as to residency of the parties were as therein alleged the court entered its order overruling each of said pleas, and the exceptions are to the judgments overruling the same.

T. J. Long and Ben Weinberg, Jr., Atlanta, for plaintiffs in error.

Hewlett & Ward, Florence Hewlett Dendy, T. J. Long and Ben Weinberg, Jr., Atlanta, for defendants in error.

DUCKWORTH, Chief Justice.

This case squarely presents the question of whether or not a Georgia court can render a judgment in personam against residents of Florida when they had in no fashion submitted to the jurisdiction and had not been served personally. In requiring that residents of the State be sued in the county of their residence, the Constitution, Art. VI, Sec. XIV, Par. VI (Code Ann. § 2-4906; Const. of 1945), manifests an unmistakable intent to require that suits be brought where the defendant lives. That intent is irreconcilable with the ideas implicit in Code Ann. § 68-808 (Ga.L.1957, pp. 649, 650) which purports to authorize a suit in personam in Georgia courts against a nonresident of Georgia. Almost a century ago the United States Supreme Court in Pennoyer v. Neff, 95 U.S. 714, 24 L.Ed. 565, spoke so clearly on this question until no reasonable doubt should now exist. We quote headnote 2 in that decision, which is: 'A personal judgment is without any validity, if it be rendered by a State court in an action upon a money-demand against a non-resident of the State, who was served by a publication of summons, but upon whom no personal service of process within the State was made, and who did not appear * * *' At page 720 in that opinion it was said: 'The authority of every tribunal is necessarily restricted by the territorial limits of the State in which it is established. Any attempt to exercise authority beyond those limits would be deemed in every other forum, as has been said by this Court, an illegitimate assumption of power, and be resisted as mere abuse.' Again at page 726, it is said: 'If without personal service, judgments in personam, obtained ex parte against non-residents and absent parties, upon mere publication of process, which, in the great majority of cases, would never be seen by the parties interested, could be upheld and enforced, they wuold be the constant instruments of fraud and oppression.' Finally we quote from page 727 as follows: 'Process from the tribunals of one State cannot run into another State, and summon parties there domiciled to leave its territory and respond to proceedings against them. Publication of process or notice within the State where the tribunal sits cannot create any greater obligation upon the non-resident to appear. Process sent to him out of the State and process published within it, are equally unavailable in proceedings to establish his personal liability.' The foregoing quotations from the opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court demonstrates that courts of Georgia have no jurisdiction to decide cases in personam against residents of another State, unless the nonresident in some fashion submits to the jurisdiction of the Georgia court. One way by which a...