Shaw v. Goebel Brewing Co.

202 F. 408, 45 L.R.A.N.S. 1090, 1913 U.S. App. LEXIS 1025
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedJanuary 7, 1913
DocketNo. 2,272
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 202 F. 408 (Shaw v. Goebel Brewing Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Shaw v. Goebel Brewing Co., 202 F. 408, 45 L.R.A.N.S. 1090, 1913 U.S. App. LEXIS 1025 (6th Cir. 1913).

Opinion

WARRINGTON, Circuit Judge

(after stating the facts as above). The important question is whether Shaw can compel the Brewing Company to accept a surrender of his certificates and execute and deliver new ones in his name. He obtained his certificates some 16 years before notifying the company of his purchase or demanding a transfer; and this was about 4 years after the company had, in obedience to an order of court, entered upon its register a transfer of these shares to Byrne, and 3 years after Byrne had disposed of the shares and ceased to be a member of the company. It is true that each of Shaw’s certificates contains the statement: “No transfer of any of the above shares can be registered without the production of this certificate.” It is also true that each of these instruments certifies that Grant is the “proprietor” of the shares named, “subject to the articles of association and the rules and regulations of the company.” The twenty-ninth paragraph of the articles- of association provides that transfers of shares shall be “signed both by the transferror and the transferee”; but transfers were permissible in “any usual common form of instrument of transfer,” and we think, if Shaw’s omission in the present instance to sign as transferee were the only difficulty, he could solve it simply by signing the transfer. In re Tahiti Cotton Company, 17 Eq. Cas. 273.

[1] Section 35 of the Companies’ Act 1862-1909, Great Britain, which among other sections was admitted in evidence as part of the proofs, provides:

“If tbe name of any person, is, without sufficient cause, entered in or omitted from the register of members of any company under this act, or if default is made or unnecessary delay takes place in entering on the register the fact of any person having ceased to be a member of the company, the person or member aggrieved * * * or the company itself, may, as respects companies registered in England * * * by motion in any of Her Majesty’s Superior Courts of law or equity, or by application to a judge sitting in chambers, * * * apply for an order of the court that the register may be rectified, and the court may either refuse such application * * * or it may, if satisfied of the justice of the ease, make an order for the rectification [411]*411of the register. * * * The court may, in any proceeding under this section, decide on any question relating to the title of any person who is a party to such proceeding to have his name entered in or omitted from the register, whether such question arises between two or more members or alleged members. or between any members or alleged members and the company, and generally the court may in any such proceeding decide any question that it may be necessary or expedient to decide for the rectification of the register.”

The Companies’ Act provides for the organization of companies such as this, and it is not disputed that this company was so organized; nor is the settled principle disputed (indeed, it is in effect relied on in support of one portion of the argument for appellant) that the applicable provisions of the act must be regarded as entering into and forming part of the company’s charter. If it be assumed for the moment that the principle can be safely applied in a case like this, Shaw’s rights as stated in his certificates of stock must be considered in connection with section 35 of the Companies’ Act. Stated differently, Shaw’s right to rely upon the representation contained in the certificates of stock that transfers of the shares could not be registered without production of the certificates was at least in terms qualified by the power vested in the courts of England by summary proceeding, upon motion of any “person or member aggrieved * * * or the company itself,” to order the register of members to be rectified wherever a name was without sufficient cause omitted therefrom or when unnecessary delay took place in entering on the register “the fact of any person having ceased to be a member.” Since Grant and Shaw were consciously dealing with shares of stock in an English corporation, which involved certificates that admittedly could not be replaced by new ones, with a transfer on the register of members, except in London, it is plain enough that Shaw’s right to the relief prayed is to be tested in large measure by such laws of England as were designed to form part of appellee’s charter. Johnson v. Charles D. Norton Co., 159 Fed. 361, 363, 86 C. C. A. 361 (C. C. A. 6th Cir.); Bond v. John V. Farwell Co., 172 Fed. 58, 64, 96 C. C. A. 546 (C. C. A. 6th Cir.). The rule in this behalf is the same as it would be if the appellee company had been created by the law of one of our own states, say other than the state of Michigan where Shaw at the time of the transfer resided and still resides. Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. at page 591, 10 L. Ed. 274. The question in that case was “whether, by the comity of nations, and between these states (Georgia' and Alabama), the corporations of one state are permitted to make contracts in another” (13 Pet. 588, 10 L. Ed. 274); and immediately following the statement of the question the' Chief Justice said:

“It is needless to enumerate bere tbe instances in which, by the general practice of civilized countries, the laws of the one will, by the comity of nations, be recognized and executed in another, where the rights of individuals are concerned.”

Justice Peckham said of that case in Iglehart v. Iglehart, 204 U. S. 487, 27 Sup. Ct. 332, 51 L. Ed. 575:

“Ever since the case of Bank of Augusta v. Earle, * * * this doctrine of comity between states in relation to corporations lias been steadily maintained, and it has been recognized by this court in many instances.”

[412]*412And Justice Story said in Black v. Zacharie & Co., 3 How. 483, 511 (11 L. Ed. 690):

“From the nature of the stock of a corporation, which is created by and under the authority of a state, it is necessarily, like every other attribute of the corporation, to be governed by the local law of that state, and not by the local law of any foreign state.”

It has been held, as in Guilford v. Western Union Telegraph Co., 59 Minn. 332, 343, 61 N. W. 324, 326 (50 Am. St. Rep. 407), relied on by appellant, that a general law of one state prescribing simply a remedy will not be regarded as binding in another state. The question in that case was whether a resident of Minnesota was entitled to a decree to compel a New York corporation, conducting only its telegraph business in the former state, to issue new certificates of stock in lieu of cértificates proved to have been lost 12 years before. The company offered to deliver the new certificates upon receiving a bond of indemnity, claiming that one of its rules required such indemnity. Failing to prove the existence of such a rule, reliance was placed upon a general law of the state of New York which provided a method of obtaining a new stock certificate in case of loss of the original. It was claimed that this furnished the exclusive remedy; but it was held that this was “merely one of the general laws and regulations of the state of New York affecting the remedy, which govern only within the limits of the state enacting them.” True, that statute authorized a summary proceeding to be taken in the Supreme Court and an order to be made requiring the corporation to deliver new certificates upon depositing such security or filing a bond in such form and with such sureties as the court might require. 5 Rev. Stat. of. N. Y. (8th Ed.) p. 4103.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
202 F. 408, 45 L.R.A.N.S. 1090, 1913 U.S. App. LEXIS 1025, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/shaw-v-goebel-brewing-co-ca6-1913.