Davis v. Nugent

90 F. Supp. 522, 1950 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3816
District Court, S.D. Mississippi·Decided April 20, 1950·No. Civ. A. No. 1348·Published·Cited by 2 cases

Opinion

MIZE, District Judge.

The defendant, C. V. Nugent, is a nonresident of the state of Mississippi, but is engaged in the wholesale lumber business at Woodville, Mississippi. He was served with process by service upon the Secretary of State under and by virtue of Section 1437 et seq., of the Code of Mississippi of 1942, which, in short, provides that any non-resident individual, company or corporation, if doing business in the state of Mississippi, shall appoint an agent for the service of process and if he fails so to do, then the Secretary of State automatically is appointed as agent for service of process. The statute provides for actual notice to be served upon the defendant by registered mail and is similar in substance to various statutes throughout the United States of similar import. The defendant has moved to quash the process upon the ground that it is unconstitutional, hut that if the statute is constitutional, then the defendant does not come within its terms.

The defendant’s operations within the state of Mississippi may be described briefly as follows: The defendant makes arrangements with those having lumber for sale to purchase that lumber if the seller brings his lumber to a lumber yard at Woodville, Mississippi, operated by Douglas Public Service Corporation under lease from the defendant. The lumber to he purchased by the defendant is brought to the lumber yard upon vehicles owned and operated by the seller of the lumber and upon arrival at the lumber yard the lumber is unloaded by the employees and servants of the seller. After unloading, the lumber is then graded and checked by the employees of the defendant. The defendant then would sell this lumber to planing mills in other cities in Mississippi and would hire contract carriers over whom the defendant exercised no control whatever to come load,, pick up and deliver the lumber to the vendee of the defendant. A copy of the lease contract between the defendant and the Douglas Public Service Corporation is attached hereto and made a part thereof.1 [524] It provides that, the defendant, C. B. Nu-gent, would lease to the Public Service Corporation certain grounds upon which the Public Service Corporation would establish a public warehouse and that the defendant would reimburse the warehouseman for wages due or claimed to be due for the customary warehouse service performed by the bonded warehouse representatives or watchmen; that the' defendant, at his sole [525] expense, shall furnish to the warehouse all the labor, material, etc. necessary for receiving, handling, delivering, moving, reconditioning and preservation of the merchandise stored with him. The plaintiff was an employee of the defendant as a lumber checker on the lumber yard, plant and premises of the defendant around this public warehouse, and plaintiff alleges that there were heavily laden lumber trucks of various persons selling and delivering lumber to the defendant, C. V. Nugent, and [526] in the performance of plaintiff’s duties he' was required to go about the lumber yard used by his employer and at places where these heavily laden lumber trucks came on the yard in order to check the lumber on behalf of the defendant, and that while he was so engaged in his duties a heavily, laden lumber truck came over a large hole which had been insecurely covered, and as a result, when the wheels of the truck hit [527] this deep depression the lumber fell off and he was injured.

The constitutionality of this statute has been upheld by the Supreme Court of Mississippi in the case of Condon v. Snipes, 205 Miss. 306, 38 So.2d 752. It also has been upheld in the case of Sugg v. Hendrix, 5 Cir., 142 F.2d 740, 743, and is no longer open to construction for its constitutionality, but in order for it to be constitutional, it must be constitutionally construed. In construing this statute the Circuit Court of Appeals in the Sugg case, supra, said:

“We are not called on to determine the validity of the statue when applied to suits arising out of a business which the state had no occasion, nor power, to regulate, but it seems clear that the state had the power to enact the statute in question for the safety and protection of persons receiving injury in and about the work of employers-in-absentia, particularly when the nature of the work is fraught with danger to those required to be in and about it, as alleged in the present case. * * * The thought is not shocking that one who comes into a state for the purpose of conducting his business in that state should be made amenable to the courts and laws of the state and answerable to its citizens for damages sustained by them which were the result of the business transacted in the state.”

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Davis v. Nugent, 90 F. Supp. 522, 1950 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3816 (S.D. Miss. 1950).

90 F. Supp. 522 (Davis v. Nugent) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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