E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Powder Co. v. Jones Bros.

200 F. 638, 10 Ohio Law Rep. 571, 1912 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1125
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. Ohio
DecidedSeptember 10, 1912
DocketNo. 1,599
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 200 F. 638 (E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Powder Co. v. Jones Bros.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. Ohio primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
E. I. Du Pont de Nemours Powder Co. v. Jones Bros., 200 F. 638, 10 Ohio Law Rep. 571, 1912 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1125 (S.D. Ohio 1912).

Opinion

SATER, District Judge.

This case is submitted on the demurrer and plea of the receivers to the intervening petition and the amendment thereto of the Western Wheeled Scraper Company. The first question for decision is this: Under the Ohio statute, is a conditional sales contract void as against partnership creditors, if executed by a partnership in the firm name and filed by the vendor in the county only in which such partnership has its usual place of business; one of the partners being a resident of such county and the other a resident of another county in such state?

Frederick R. Jones, a resident of Franklin county, and G. A. Jones, a resident of Hamilton county, were, on and prior to September 12, 1910, and ever since have been, partners engaged in business as railroad and general contractors, under the firm name and style of Jones Bros. On that date the partnership and the intervener entered into a conditional sales contract, entitled a “car lease,” and signed, “Jones Bros., by G. A. Jones,” whereby certain cars, designed for use in construction work, were hired and leased to the Jones Bros. The cars, the title to which was retained by the lessor, were sold and delivered at Aurora, 111., and shipped to and used in Ohio, until November 12, 1911, and thereafter in Indiana. The Jones Bros, executed and [640]*640delivered nine notes for the unpaid purchase money, aggregating $12,776.38, and entitled in the lease the rental for such cars. The lease authorizes the lessor, in case of any default on the part of the lessees, or of the institution of any legal proceedings against them affecting the cars, to declare, on 10 days’ notice, all unpaid installments immediately due and payable, and to take immediate and exclusive possession of the rolling stock in question, wherever found, and hold, lease, use, enjoy, and operate the same, and apply the earnings and rentals to the satisfaction of the unpaid installments, or, on like notice, to sell the same at the lessor’s option, 'as an entirety or in lots, at public or private sale, at such place or places as it may elect. In case of full payment of all sums due under the contract, and the further sum of $1, the lessor was bound to convey the cars to the lessee.

The lease, duly verified, was filed November 1, 1911, with the recorder of Franklin county, in which, the intervener alleges, the “partnership resided and had its principal place of business”; but it was not filed with the, recorder of Hamilton county. On December 6th, on complainant’s bill and application, receivers were appointed by this court for the Jones Bros, as individuals and as a partnership. The receivers returned the cars to Ohio and sold them under an order of court about the time of the filing of the intervening petition. The intervener asks for a delivery of the cars, or for the payment of the above-mentioned notes. Its position, which is controverted by the receivers, is that under the law merchant a partnership is a quasi corporation; that the statute which permits a partnership to sue and be sued in its firm name (section 11,260, Ohio General Code) has constituted it an artificial person, or distinct entity, like a corporation; that as such it has a residence at its usual or principal place of business; and that h> maintain the vendor’s priority it was not necessary to file the contract elsewhere than in the county in which the partnership had its usual place of doing business.

. [1] Were this a proceeding in bankruptcy, the case would be controlled by Re National Cash Register Co., 174 Fed. 579, 98 C. C. A. 425 (C. C. A. 6). The proceeding, however, is purely equitable. In actions of like character, the status of an unfiled conditional sales contract under the Ohio statute was defined in Hamilton v. David C. Beggs Co. (D. C.) 179 Fed. 949, and Cincinnati Equipment Co. v. Degnan, 184 Fed. 834, 107 C. C. A. 158 (C. C. A. 6). If the contract in question was not filed as required by statute, it falls within the rule announced in those cases, and the intervener’s position is then that of a general creditor. In the absence of any utterance by the Supreme Court of the state as to the validity of a conditional sales contract as against creditors and subsequent bona fide mortgagees of the vendee, whose status is the same as or akin to that of the one now under consideration, recourse is had, for a determination of the questions here involved, to the Ohio statutes affecting partnerships and chattel mortgages given by them, and to the decisions touching the same rendered by such court and by the courts of other states having similar statutes. The rule as to the filing of the two kinds of instru[641]*641ments is the same, as will be seen by comparing sections 8560, 8561, and 8562 with sections 8568 and 8569, General Code. Section 8568 requires such a contract to be deposited with the county recorder of the county where the person signing the instrument resides at the time of its execution, if a resident of the state, and, if not such resident, then with the county recorder of the county in which the property is situated at the time of the execution of the instrument.

[ 2 ] Residence cannot be predicated of a partnership. Section 8099 requires every partnership transacting business in the state under a fictitious name or a designation not showing the names of the persons interested as partners therein, to file with the clerk of the court of common pleas of the county in which its principal office or place of business is situated a certificate, to be indexed by him, stating the names in full of all the members of the partnership and their respective places of residence. Section 11,286, relating to the service of summons, provides that it shall be made by delivery of a copy to the defendant personally, or by leaving it at his usual place of residence, or, if the defendant be a partnership, sued by its company name, by leaving a copy at its usual place of doing business, or with any member of such partnership. Service of garnishee process is made in the same manner. Section 11,833. None of the foregoing statutory provisions attribute a residence to a partnership. On the contrary, they clearly draw a distinction between a partnership’s usual place of doing business and the residence of a defendant who is a natural person, and this distinction is clearly recognized in Smith v. Hoover, 39 Ohio St. 249, Grady v. Gosline & Barbour, 48 Ohio St. 665, 29 N. E. 768, and Byers v. Schlupe, 51 Ohio St. 300, 38 N. E. 117, 25 L. R. A. 649, and impliedly so in Whitman v. Keith, 18 Ohio St. 134. In the Byers Case, 51 Ohio St. 314, 316, 38 N. E. 121, 25 L. R. A. 649, it is said:

"A partnership is not, in our judgment, a legal entity, having, as such, a domicile or residence separate and distinct from that, of the individuáis who constitute it. To what extent residence may he affirmed of a partnership as such was considered hy the court in Fitzgerald v. Grimmell, 64 Iowa, 261 [20 N. W. 179]. In the dissenting opinion there is much force, and we cite the same with our concurrence: ‘Residence * * * in my opinion can be predicated only of a person, natural or artificial. A partnership, as distinguished from the members composing it, is neither. Besides, it appears to me that, in any view, the mere fact that a partnership maintains for the transaction of its business an established agent in a county where neither partner resides cannot constitute the partnership a resident of such county.

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Bluebook (online)
200 F. 638, 10 Ohio Law Rep. 571, 1912 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1125, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/e-i-du-pont-de-nemours-powder-co-v-jones-bros-ohsd-1912.