Law v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad

71 Pa. D. & C. 150, 1950 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 424
CourtPennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County
DecidedApril 25, 1950
Docketno. 3386
StatusPublished

This text of 71 Pa. D. & C. 150 (Law v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Law v. Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, 71 Pa. D. & C. 150, 1950 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 424 (Pa. Super. Ct. 1950).

Opinion

Milner, J.,

Plaintiff was employed by defendant railroad as a pantryman waiter on defendant’s train and on November 19,1948, was injured on defendant’s train in Miami, Fla. Defendant is a foreign railroad corporation incorporated under the laws of Virginia and having its office and principal place of business in Wilmington, N. C. He brought a suit in trespass and has filed a complaint therein against defendant railroad in this court under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act. Defendant railroad has filed preliminary objections to the suit and complaint under Pa. R. C. P. 1017(6) the gist of which objections is that there is a lack of jurisdiction of this court over defendant railroad because defendant corporation does no business in Philadelphia County or Pennsylvania and there has been no valid service of process upon it in this action in trespass.

Pa. R. C. P. 2179(a) establishes the venue in actions against corporations. Under that rule a personal action against a corporation may be brought only in “(1) the county where its registered office or principal place of business is located; or (2) a county where it regularly conducts business”. Defendant has no registered office or principal place of business in Philadelphia county, so that the venue in the instant case can be sustained only if Philadelphia is a county where defendant “regularly conducts business.” The practice in Pennsylvania has always required that a foreign corporation “do business” in the particular county in which the action in personam is brought or that the [152]*152cause of action arise in that county. The Act of April 8, 1851, P. L. 353, sec. 6, which was suspended by Pa. R. C. P. 2200-6, provided as follows: “It shall and may be lawful to institute and commence an action against” a foreign corporation in any county where it shall transact business or have an agency. Pa. R. C. P. 2179(a) is substantially declaratory of the prior law and the rule merely codifies the above-mentioned practice and applies the same principle to all corporations, domestic or foreign. Under the due process clause of the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution it is required that a foreign corporation do business in a State to subject it to suit there. The local venue within the various subdivisions of the State is not a Federal matter and may be freely regulated by the State.

The question of whether a foreign corporation is “doing business” in a State or subdivision thereof is, of course, one of fact. . . . [The court here proceeded to quote a stipulation of facts indicating that defendant’s activity in Pennsylvania had been limited to the solicitation of freight and passenger business and the handling of complaints from residents in the area. Tickets over defendant’s lines were sold in Pennsylvania by connecting carriers.]

In Goodrich-Amram, Standard Pennsylvania Practice, in the comments on Rule 2179(a)-3 it is said:

“The phrase ‘doing business’ has at least three connotations— (1) doing business so as to require registration with the Secretary of the Commonwealth and the securing of a certificate of authority; (2) doing business so as to be subject to the imposition of Pennsylvania corporation taxes; (3) doing business so as to be subject to suit in actions in personam within the state. In many instances the requirements may be identical, but it is not impossible that the foreign corporation may be conducting enough business to require [153]*153registration or to be subject to taxes, yet at the same time not be subject to a suit in personam. Decisions relating to taxing, licensing or to state laws that impede the free flow of interstate commerce do not control the question of service of process.”

We are concerned here with the third of the above connotations, viz., whether a foreign railroad corporation is doing business in the County of Philadelphia of this State so as to subject it to a suit in personam in this court. The decisions of appellate courts upon which plaintiff relies in support of the service made in this case are in the main cases which fall under the first and second of the above connotations and in our opinion are not controlling in the case at bar.

The leading case in Pennsylvania on the question before us is Shambe v. Delaware & Hudson R. R. Co., 288 Pa. 240 (1927), in which case service of the summons was set aside where it appeared that the activities of defendant within Philadelphia County were substantially identical with the activities of defendant here involved. In that case, it was pointed out that, unless a foreign corporation is doing business within a State, the State has no power to subject the foreign corporation to its jurisdiction, and that the mere solicitation of business by a railroad company does not constitute “doing business”. The Supreme Court held that solicitation of business for the railroad company was not necessary to its existence but was merely collateral or incidental to the main purpose of carrying freight and passengers and that under the facts in the case the business transacted by the railroad in Philadelphia was the solicitation of freight, etc., and did not amount to “doing business”. . . .

We have found no case in- which the decision in the Shambe case has been reversed by the appellate courts of this State, but we find that it has been cited repeatedly with approval in recent decisions of the Pennsyl[154]*154vania Supreme Court. See Otto A. C. Hagen Corp. v. Empire Sheet and Tin Plate Co., 337 Pa. 232, 234 (1940); Holliday, admrx., v. Pacific Atlantic Steamship Corp., 354 Pa. 271, 275 (1946); New v. Robinson-Houchin Optical Co., 357 Pa. 47, 49 (1947). These cases authoritatively establish that something more than solicitation is required in order to sustain service of process, under the Pennsylvania provisions concerning venue in actions against foreign corporations.

This court in a number of decisions has followed the reasoning in the Shambe case. In fact, this court, in an opinion by President Judge MacNeille dated July 9, 1942, set aside service of a summons on. the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company for want of jurisdiction, in the case of Ethel Freedman v. Atlantic Coast Line R. R. and The Pennsylvania R. R., as of C. P. No. 3, March term, 1942, no. 1222. In that case the facts, which appeared from lengthy depositions that had been taken in connection with defendant’s motion to set aside service, were identical with the facts shown by the stipulation that has been filed in the instant case. This court cited the Shambe case and other cases considered by us in this opinion and stated that it was “compelled to hold that the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad Company ... by maintaining an office in this state for the solicitation of business and by permitting tickets to be sold by the Pennsylvania Railroad, a coupon of which was good for passage over the said defendant railroad, or by sending its freight and passenger cars into this state, was not ‘doing business’ within this state.” Another decision of this court to the same effect is Sheetz v. Chesapeake & Ohio Railway Co., 10 Dist. R. 373 (1901). There are many other cases in the lower courts of our State to the same effect, e.g., Wilkinson’s Sons v. Atlantic Coast Line R. R. Co., 34 Pa. C. C. 347. (C. P. No. 2, Phila., 1907) ; Foster v. Atlantic Coast Line R. R. Co., in the Municipal Court of [155]*155Philadelphia, as of April term, 1937, no. 2; Wood v. Cunard Steamship Co., 23 Dist. R. 421 (C. P. No. 5, Phila., 1914).

The decision of the United States Supreme Court in Green v.

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Bluebook (online)
71 Pa. D. & C. 150, 1950 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 424, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/law-v-atlantic-coast-line-railroad-pactcomplphilad-1950.