Haymes v. Columbia Pictures Corp.

16 F.R.D. 118, 1954 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4145
CourtDistrict Court, S.D. New York
DecidedAugust 2, 1954
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 16 F.R.D. 118 (Haymes v. Columbia Pictures Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, S.D. New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Haymes v. Columbia Pictures Corp., 16 F.R.D. 118, 1954 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4145 (S.D.N.Y. 1954).

Opinion

WEINFELD, District Judge.

This is a stockholder’s derivative action in which jurisdiction is based upon diversity of citizenship. The defendants, challenging the existence of the necessary diversity, move before answer to dismiss the action for lack of jurisdiction. The defendants contend that plaintiff is not a citizen of Nevada as alleged in her complaint, but is, in fact, a citizen of either New York or California. The defendants include a New York corporation and a California corporation. If their contention that plaintiff is a citizen of either New York or California is upheld, there is no diversity of citizenship and the action is not maintainable in this Court.

The parties are in substantial accord on the general principles which govern the disposition of this application. For the purpose of federal diver? sity jurisdiction, a party is a citizen of the state in which he is domiciled.1 A corporation is a citizen of the state of its creation;2 and in a derivative action the corporation on whose behalf the action is brought, though only a nominal defendant, is, nevertheless, for the purpose of diversity jurisdiction, treated as a true defendant.3

The defendants having challenged the allegations upon which federal jurisdiction is predicated, the plaintiff has the burden of establishing the requisite jurisdictional facts.4 Domicil consists of physical presence in a given jurisdiction with intent to reside therein permanently or indefinitely.5 An existing domicil continues until a new one has been acquired.6 To acquire a new domicil it must appear that one has come to the place of the alleged domicil coupled with the intention to make that place his permanent home or for an indefinite period.7

We now turn to a consideration of the facts. In addition to detailed affidavits, there were also submitted to the Court extensive depositions of the plaintiff and her husband taken by the defendants. The defendants thus having conducted a full cross-examination, the record is, in some respects at least, similar to that on a full hearing of the issues.

In 1949, the plaintiff, theretofore domiciled in the United States, married a domiciliary of France. She thereafter resided with her husband in France until 1951 and presumably acquired a domicil in France. In 1951, the couple separated and the plaintiff returned to the United States with her children, one a child of the 1949 marriage. She consulted counsel who advised that legal grounds existed not alone for a divorce [121]*121but for the retention of custody of this child. She was further advised that both her marital status and her rights with respect to the custody of the child would be governed by the laws of the state in which she decided to make her permanent home and that mere compliance with the requirements for statutory residence would not necessarily entitle a divorce decree to full faith and credit in other states or foreign countries.

The plaintiff’s purpose to seeure a valid divorce decree and effective and undisturbed custody of the child was of paramount consideration and this, along with other important personal and professional matters, led to a deliberate decision with respect to establishing a permanent home, and she decided upon Nevada. Accordingly, the plaintiff became a resident of Nevada with her children in the spring of 1951. She instituted a divorce action on September 1, 1951, about five months later, instead of at the expiration of the minimum six-week residence prescribed by Nevada law. The action was not heard until January 26, 1953—about sixteen months later— when a final decree was entered based on a finding of fact not alone that the plaintiff was a bona fide resident and domiciliary of Nevada, but that she then had the intent to make Nevada “her home, residence and domicile for an indefinite period of time.”

There are other items of evidence, each by itself perhaps not too significant, but which when taken together, strongly confirm actual adoption of Nevada as plaintiff’s domicil: In 1951, plaintiff established a bank account and opened a safe deposit vault in Nevada, which has been maintained continuously ever since. She executed her will as a resident of Nevada in accordance with its laws. Since 1951, her tax returns, both federal and state, have been executed as a Nevada resident. During the same period she filed nonresident tax returns in California, giving Nevada as her residence. In 1952, while in Europe, she sought an absentee ballot as a citizen of Nevada, but the requirement of personal registration frustrated this effort to vote. She remarried in Nevada in September, 1953; the marriage certificate gives Nevada as her residence, and she also executed a prenuptial agreement in and under the laws of Nevada. Though between the spring of 1951 and May 1954, when this suit was begun, professional engagements and business exigencies kept the plaintiff away from Nevada for substantial periods, these absences did not interrupt the continuity of her legal domicil in Nevada.8

I am satisfied that the record abundantly establishes that when the plaintiff on her return to the United States in the spring of 1951 took up residence in Nevada she did so with the genuine intention of making it her permanent residence, and that she thereby acquired a Nevada domicil.

The defendants urge, however, that whatever the plaintiff’s domicil may have been before, on her remarriage in September, 1953, her domicil became that of her husband, as a matter of law. They argue, too, that her husband’s domicil is New York or California. For the present purposes, I assume, arguendo, that the plaintiff’s domicil at the commencement of this action was her husband’s. I, therefore, find it unnecessary to discuss the plaintiff’s interesting contention that since the rule by which the wife’s domicil becomes that of her husband rests on the common-law fiction of the unity of husband and wife—a vanishing fiction with little, if any, validity today—it is no longer universally applied and ought not to apply in this ease.9

[122]*122It is conceded that up to August 1953, the plaintiff’s husband had been domiciled in California. On August 10, 1953, he went to Nevada. He claims that he became a true resident of that state. The defendants insist, on the other hand, that this claimed residence is spurious. No useful purpose will be served by a recital of the many items of evidence bearing on these contentions, for the issue turns on basic matters rather than on minutiae.

The plaintiff's husband’s presence in Nevada, begun in August 1953, had a dual purpose. He wished to secure a divorce from his then wife and, after the divorce, he planned to marry the plaintiff. His claim of a Nevada domicil must be analyzed in this setting. A decree divorcing him from his former wife who filed a formal answer, but offered no evidence, was made by the Nevada Court on September 23, 1953, and on the day following he married the plaintiff. The Court found the plaintiff in the divorce action to be a bona fide resident of Nevada. While this finding does not preclude independent inquiry in this action into his Nevada residence, there is no reason to indulge a presumption against it.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
16 F.R.D. 118, 1954 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 4145, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/haymes-v-columbia-pictures-corp-nysd-1954.