Nagl v. Northam Warren Corp.

8 F.R.D. 130, 1948 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3227
CourtDistrict Court, D. Nebraska
DecidedApril 16, 1948
DocketCivil Action No. 256—46
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 8 F.R.D. 130 (Nagl v. Northam Warren Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Nebraska primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Nagl v. Northam Warren Corp., 8 F.R.D. 130, 1948 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3227 (D. Neb. 1948).

Opinion

DELEHANT, District Judge.

The plaintiff, a resident of Omaha, and a citizen of Nebraska, instituted this action in the District Court of Douglas County, Nebraska against the defendant, a New York Corporation having its principal office and place of business in Stamford, Connecticut, to recover judgment for a sum largely exceeding, exclusive of interest and costs, the amount of three thousand dollars, [131]*131as damages sustained by the plaintiff in consequence of the defendant’s alleged conversion of certain shares of stock in U. S. Brush Company of Omaha (hereinafter referred to as Brush Company), a Nebraska corporation, which shares were formerly owned by the plaintiff. Process was ostensibly served on the defendant by a deputy sheriff of Douglas County, Nebraska, who stated in his return to a summons, regular in form and of a type generally in use in Nebraska’s courts, that he delivered a true and certified copy of the summons with all endorsements thereon “to Northam Warren, president of said corporation, who was in charge of the office at the usual place of doing business of said corporation in Douglas County, Nebraska, personally in Douglas County, Nebraska”.

The defendant caused the removal of the action to this court on the ground of diversity of citizenship, Title 28 U.S.C.A. §§ 41(1) (c) and 71; and thereupon, without answering, served and filed a pleading entitled “Special Appearance of Northam Warren Corporation,” in which it challenged the validity of the service and return of summons upon the defendant and the court’s jurisdiction over the defendant’s person. That pleading calls for the present ruling.

Presumably, the defendant was motivated in the formulation of its pleading by an inordinate attachment to the procedural usages of the state courts of Nebraska under its Code of Civil Procedure, or at least subjected to the intelligible dubiety with which counsel approach in those courts the task of challenging jurisdiction over their clients’ persons. It need hardly be observed that, although the formal service of process in the present action was effected in the state court, it is being attacked here and the weapons for that purpose are those provided for the practice in this court. The verbose and repetitious “special appearance” so familiar to practitioners in Nebraska’s courts is certainly not one of those weapons. And its attempted employment is quite out of harmony with either the language or the spirit of the rules. The court, therefore, might appropriately strike the “Special Appearance” as an unauthorized pleading, and allow the defendant to consider whether, by serving and filing a pleading beyond the contemplation of the rules governing procedure here, it may have appeared generally in the action. But, since the filing directs attention to Rule 12(b), Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c, and its purpose is clear, and the plaintiff has not questioned its adequacy to raise the question at which it aims, it is being treated as a motion presenting the related defenses of lack of jurisdiction over the defendant’s person, Rule 12(b) (2), and insufficiency of the service of process, Rule 12(b) (S). But the court’s pursuit of that course does not involve the acknowledgment of its necessity. Much less does it foreshadow like indulgence in the future administration of the applicable rule by this court.

The question has been submitted upon the complaint (petition in state court) ; the summons and return thereto; the special appearance; and sundry affidavits served and filed in behalf of both parties. Counsel have assisted the court by the submission of exhaustive briefs, the court’s interest in which must not be appraised mistakenly by the relatively meagre citation of authorities by which this memorandum is characterized.

From the showings made, the following facts are found by the court, as the basis for the ruling herein announced:

On, and for a substantial period prior to, January 1, 1934, Brush Company was, and it ever since has been, and now is, a corporation organized under the statutes and laws of Nebraska, having its principal place of business in Omaha, Douglas County, Nebraska, and engaged in the manufacture and sale of sundry items which presently include and for some time have included industrial brushes, artists’ brushes, nail polish brushes, applicator brushes, emery boards, orange wood sticks and plastic closures. Through the same period, and prior to its inception, the defendant was, and it now is, a New York corporation, having its principal office and place of business in Connecticut, and engaged in the [132]*132business of preparing and selling cosmetics, toiletries, nail polish, emery boards, and orange wood sticks.

At no time has the defendant ever been licensed or permitted, or sought license or permission, by the state authorities of Nebraska to do business in that state, or designated any person, firm or corporation as its resident agent, or one authorized to receive, or be served with, process in behalf of the defendant. Nor has the defendant ever established or had or maintained any office or place of business, or done or transacted business within Nebraska, unless its relations and transactions with Brush Company, as herein recited and found, constitute the doing of business within that state for the purpose of the present inquiry.

Throughout January, 1934, and prior thereto, the plaintiff was a resident of Omaha, Nebraska and the president and general manager of Brush Company. Of Brush Company’s capital stock he owned twenty-three shares, each of the par value of one hundred dollars. The remaining shares of its capital stock (consisting, as the plaintiff claims, of two hundred eighty-two shares, and, as the company’s records appear to show, of two hundred seventy-nine and three-fourths shares, the discrepancy being entirely immaterial) were then owned by sundry other persons unrelated to this action.

In January, 1934, the defendant, acting through Marshall T. Brekke (presently a resident of New York, and then a resident of New York or another Eastern state), one of the officers and the agent of the defendant, purchased all of the shares of the capital stock of Brush Company except the twenty-three shares owned by the plaintiff, and, as to those twenty-three shares, acquired at least their apparent title through the assignment and delivery to it of the certificate or certificates evidencing their ownership. (Whether the assignment thus made was an absolute sale, as the defendant seems to contend, or a merely formal transfer under a promise by the defendant thereafter to purchase the stock at a price to be agreed upon, as the plaintiff asserts, is not determined, for that is at the core of the basic claim of the plaintiff against the defendant and is not vital to the question of the validity of service of process.) Thereafter, the defendant has been the owner (subject to any rights that may remain in the plaintiff in the twenty-three shares) of all of the capital stock of Brush Company, which it has caused to be held from time to time by its nominees. In the negotiations for the acquisition of the stock, Brekke came into Nebraska and conducted at least some and possibly all of the interviews within that state, representing only the defendant in the premises.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Scholl v. Mnuchin
N.D. California, 2020
Robinson v. Morris
S.D. Illinois, 2019
Investors Guar. Fund, Ltd. v. Compass Bank
779 So. 2d 185 (Supreme Court of Alabama, 2000)
Irvine v. American National Bank & Trust Co.
108 F.R.D. 12 (N.D. Illinois, 1985)
Mid-Continent Telephone Corp. v. Home Telephone Co.
307 F. Supp. 1014 (N.D. Mississippi, 1969)
Fooshee v. Interstate Vending Company
234 F. Supp. 44 (D. Kansas, 1964)
Terry Carpenter, Limited v. Ideal Cement Co.
117 F. Supp. 441 (D. Nebraska, 1954)
Favell-Utley Realty Co. v. Harbor Plywood Corp.
94 F. Supp. 96 (N.D. California, 1950)
Franco Ramos v. District Court of Ponce
71 P.R. 642 (Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, 1950)
Franco Ramos v. Corte de Distrito de Ponce
71 P.R. Dec. 686 (Supreme Court of Puerto Rico, 1950)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
8 F.R.D. 130, 1948 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 3227, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/nagl-v-northam-warren-corp-ned-1948.