Case ID: wis_44/html/0387-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "ByaN, O. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The Charter Oak Life Insurance Company vs. Sawyer and another.
    
      Foreign insurance companies.
    
    Foreign corporations may maintain suits in the courts of this state; and foreign insurance companies may take securities ,in this state for debts due them from residents thereof, without complying with the statutory conditions to their transaction here of the business of insurance.
    APPEAL from the Circuit Court tov Milwaukee County.
    Plaintiff took from the defendant Sawyer, at Milwaukee in this state, in 1864, a bond for the payment of moneys then loaned to him by plaintiff, and a mortgage of land in this state as a further security therefor. This action was brought on the bond and mortgage, upon an alleged default of said defendant. The complaint alleges that plaintiff is, and was at the times of the transactions therein mentioned, a corporation created by a certain specified statute of the state of Connecticut, having its principal place of business in Hartford in said state, and duly authorized to enter into the contracts sued upon, and entitled to institute and maintain this action; but it contains no further or more specific averments as to such authority to so contract, or to sue here.
    The defendant Sawyer demurred to the complaint, on the grounds that it did not state a cause of action; that, as a foreign corporation, plaintiff had no authority to make the contracts sued on, or loan money, or prosecute the action, in this state; and that the court had no jurisdiction of the action. Prom an order overruling his demurrer, said defendant appealed.
    The cause was submitted on the brief of Orton & Frank-enberger for the appellant, and that of Wilson Graham for the respondent.
   ByaN, O. J.

Insurance companies in other states are bound by statute to certain prescribed compliances, in order to authorize them to transact the business of insurance in this state. But compliance with that statute is not necessary to enable them to take securities in this state for debts due to them by residents of the state.

And if it ever were a doubtful question whether corporations of one state could maintain suits in another state, it is no longer so. Such suits are now supported by judicial decisions in all the states. It would be intolerable injustice if a creditor corporation in one state could not sue its debtor in another. Such corporations, denied judicial process against their debtors in the courts of the debtors’ domicile, might well exclaim, as Chancellor Keht, I think, once said: Quod genus hoe hom-inum? quaere huno tarn barbara, morem permittit patria? Hospitio prohibemur arenal.

By the Oourt. — The order of the court below is affirmed.