Montesano Lumber Co. v. Portland Iron Works

152 P. 244, 78 Or. 53, 1915 Ore. LEXIS 18
CourtOregon Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 19, 1915
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 152 P. 244 (Montesano Lumber Co. v. Portland Iron Works) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Oregon Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Montesano Lumber Co. v. Portland Iron Works, 152 P. 244, 78 Or. 53, 1915 Ore. LEXIS 18 (Or. 1915).

Opinion

Mr. Justice McBride

delivered the opinion of the court.

1, 2. Many specifications of error are assigned in the abstract, but only three are specified or discussed in the brief or at the hearing, and we shall therefore treat the others as waived. It is admitted that the laws of the State of Washington require that articles of incorporation shall specify the name of the city, town or locality in which the principal place of business of the company is to be located, and it is shown that the articles of the defendant’s vendee so specified Seattle, in King County. It also appears that the Supreme Court of Washington has decided that the residence of a corporation is the city and county named in the articles of incorporation as its principal place of business. It is shown the laws of Washington require that all conditional sales of personal property, or leases thereof containing a conditional right to purchase when the property is placed in the possession of the vendee, shall be absolute to purchasers, incumbrancers and subsequent creditors in good faith, unless within ten days after the taking of possession by the vendee a memorandum of such sale, stating its terms and conditions, shall be filed in the auditor’s office of the county wherein at the date of vendee’s taking possession of the property the vendee resides. It is [62]*62also apparent that the conditional bill of sale was never recorded in King Connty, the vendee’s legal residence, bnt was recorded in Chehalis County, where the mill was situated. From these facts it follows that, if plaintiff is a purchaser in good faith, the conditional bill of sale is void as to it, and it was the owner of the machinery at the time of defendant’s alleged trespass. It is our opinion that the title to the property vested in plaintiff the moment it was installed in the mill. There was no constructive notice arising from the recording of the bill of sale in the wrong county, and there is no evidence that plaintiff had any actual notice of the conditional character of the transaction until nearly a year after the machinery was installed. The purport of the lease is that the lessee shall pay $300 per month as rent for the mill, that $10,000 shall be paid in advance in machinery and equipment to consist of certain articles specified in the lease, and that upon the installation of such machinery and equipment it shall be and become the property of the lessor. Aside, therefore, from the question of whether or not the machinery was so permanently attached to the building as to become a fixture, and consequently a part of the realty, it became plaintiff’s property by the terms of the lease. Plaintiff was a purchaser within the meaning of the statute quoted. The consideration paid was the giving of the lease and putting the lessee into possession of a valuable mill.

3. So far, then, plaintiff has shown a right to recover damages unless defendant’s contention that this is an action to recover for injuries to real property has been sustained. It is the almost universal holding in this country that an action for trespass on real property is local, and can be maintained only in the state or county where the injury occurred, and that a court [63]*63foreign to the place of injury is without jurisdiction to determine such a controversy.. Such was the common-law rule as is conclusively demonstrated in the opinion of Lord Chancellor Herschell in the great case of the British South Africa Co. v. Companhia de Mocambique, [1893] App. Cas. 602, where the whole subject was thoroughly gone over in view of supposed changes made by the English reformed procedure. Imthe United States the holding to the same effect has been almost unanimous. Ellenwood v. Marietta Chair Co., 158 U. S. 105 (39 L. Ed. 913, 15 Sup. Ct. Rep. 771), was a case practically coinciding with the case at bar. The complaint alleged that on January 1, 1875, and on divers other days, etc., sundry persons, knowing the land and timber thereon to be the plaintiff’s property, without any right or authority from him, and at the instance and for the use and benefit of the defendant, cut down, removed and sawed into logs a large quantity of the timber, and the defendant, knowing the logs to be cut from the land, and both land and logs to be Bailey’s property, took the logs into its possession and converted them to its own use. There was no demurrer or plea to the jurisdiction, and an answer was filed to the merits, but thereafter The court ordered that the action be abated and stricken from the docket. Upon the appeal Justice G-ray said:

“Various grounds taken by the defendant in error in support of the judgment below need not be considered, because there is one decisive reason against the maintenance of the action. By the law of England, and of those states of the Union whose jurisprudence is based upon the common law, an action for trespass upon land, like an action to recover the title or the possession of the land itself, is a local action, and can only be brought within the state in which the land lies: Livingston v. Jefferson, 1 Brock. 203 [Fed. Cas. [64]*64No. 8411]; McKenna v. Fisk, 1 How. 241, 247 [11 L. Ed. 117]; Northern Indiana R. R. v. Michigan Central R. R., 15 How. 233, 242, 251 [14 L. Ed. 674]; Huntington v. Attrill, 146 U. S. 657, 659, 670 [36 L. Ed. 1123, 13 Sup. Ct. Rep. 224]; British South Africa Co. v. Companhia de Mocambique, [1893] App. Cas. 602; Cragin v. Lovell, 88 N. Y. 258; Allin v. Connecticut River Lumber Co., 150 Mass. 560 [23 N. E. 581, 6 L. R. A. 416]; Thayer v. Brooks, 17 Ohio, 489, 492 [49 Am. Dec. 474]; Kinkead’s Code Pleading, § 35. The original petition contained two counts, the one for trespass upon land and the other for taking away and converting to the defendant’s use personal property; and the cause of action stated in the second count might have been considered as transitory, although the first was not: McKenna v. Fisk, above cited; Williams v. Breedon, 1 Bos. & P. 329. But the petition, as amended by the plaintiff, on motion of the defendant, and by' order and leave of the court, contained a single count, alleging a continuing trespass upon the land by the defendant, through its agents, and its cutting and conversion of timber growing thereon. This allegation was of a single cause of action, in which the trespass upon the land was the principal thing, and the conversion of the timber was incidental only, and could not, therefore, be maintained by proof of the conversion of personal property without also proving the trespass upon real estate: Cotton v. United States, 11 How. 229 [13 L. Ed. 675]; Eames v. Prentice, 8 Cush. [Mass.] 337; Howe v. Willson, 1 Denio [N. Y.] 181; Dodge v. Colby, 108 N. Y. 445 [15 N. E. 703]; Merriman v. McCormick Co., 86 Wis. 142 [56 N. W. 743]. The entire cause of action was local. The land alleged to have been trespassed upon being in West Virginia, the action could not be maintained in Ohio. The Circuit Court of the United States sitting in Ohio had no jurisdiction of the cause of action, and for this reason, if for no other, rightly ordered the case to be stricken from its docket, although no question of jurisdiction had been made, by demurrer or plea: British South Africa Co.

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Bluebook (online)
152 P. 244, 78 Or. 53, 1915 Ore. LEXIS 18, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/montesano-lumber-co-v-portland-iron-works-or-1915.