Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/226/205/
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 04:47:39+00:00

Document:
Rev.Stat., § 1011, providing that there shall be no reversal in this Court upon a writ of error for error in ruling on any plea of abatement other than one to the jurisdiction of the court, does not apply to writs of error to state courts, but only to lower federal courts.
The subdivision and rearrangement of § 22 of the Judiciary Act of 1789 in the Revised Statutes of 1873 did not work any change in the purpose and meaning of the original act.
The statute of Kansas of 1905, requiring certain classes of foreign corporations to file statements is an invalid restriction and burden and unconstitutional as to foreign corporations engaged in interstate commerce, under the commerce clause of the federal Constitution. International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91.
of corporations of other states to do business in Kansas, are stated in the opinion.
subject the land included therein to the satisfaction of their several judgments. The plaintiffs were corporations organized under the laws of states other than Kansas, and four of them were doing a purely interstate business in that state, but without complying with its laws presently to be mentioned. The defendants set up this noncompliance by an answer in the nature of a plea in abatement, and the court sustained the plea and dismissed the suits as to the four plaintiffs. As to the other three plaintiffs, relief was denied for other reasons, which need not be stated. The judgment was affirmed by the supreme court of the state against the contention that the laws of Kansas under which the plea in abatement was sustained are violative of the commerce clause of the Constitution of the United States, 80 Kan. 29, and then the case was brought here.
Some minor questions of appellate practice were urged upon our attention, but their statement and consideration have become unnecessary through the concession of counsel for plaintiffs in error, made during the oral argument and acted upon at the time, that the writ of error might be dismissed as to the Aultman and Miller Buckeye Company, the Consolidated Steel & Wire Company, and the Galveston Rope Company. Therefore, attention need be given only to the ruling upon the plea in abatement.
circuit courts, and International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91, and International Textbook Co. v. Lynch, 218 U. S. 664, are cases in which it was not applied upon writs of error to state courts. This difference in the treatment of the two classes of cases has not been inadvertent, but deliberate, and the reason for it is at once apparent when § 22 of the original Judiciary Act, 1 Stat. 84, c. 20, is examined. The provision originated in that section, and was there associated with other provisions which unmistakably show that it was intended to embrace only writs of error to the circuit and district courts. At the time of the revision in 1873, § 22 was divided into several shorter sections, and included in the revision according to an arrangement, adopted for purposes of convenience only, whereby the several parts of the original section became more or less separated; but that, in the absence of some substantial change in phraseology, did not work any change in their purpose or meaning. Rev.Stat. § 5600; Hyde v. United States, 225 U. S. 361; McDonald v. Hovey, 110 U. S. 619. This is a writ of error to a state court, and so our power to review the ruling upon the plea in abatement is not affected by § 1011.
"1st. The authorized capital stock. 2d. The paid-up capital stock. 3d. The par value and the market value per share of said stock. 4th. A complete and detailed statement of the assets and liabilities of the corporation. 5th. A full and complete list of the stockholders, with the post office address of each, and the number of shares held and paid by each. 6th. The names and post office addresses of the officers, trustees, or directors and manager elected for the ensuing year, together with a certificate of the time and manner in which such election was held."
"no action shall be maintained or recovery had in any of the courts of this state by any corporation doing business in this state without first obtaining the certificate of the Secretary of State that statements provided for in this section have been properly made."
question was presented to this Court and decided in the negative in the case of International Textbook Co. v. Pigg, 217 U. S. 91 -- a case in which the Supreme Court of Kansas had applied the provisions of § 1358 (§ 1283, Gen.Stat. 1901) to a corporation of another state, doing an interstate business in Kansas. And the decision of this Court in that case was shortly thereafter followed in the similar case of International Textbook Co. v. Lynch, 218 U. S. 664, brought here on error to the Supreme Court of Vermont. It is due to the Supreme Court of Kansas to observe that this Court's decision in the Pigg case had not been made when that court's decision in the present case was given; but, in saying this, we would not be understood as implying that this case announced any new doctrine in the Pigg case, for it but reiterated and applied principles which were already well recognized, as was shown in the earlier cases of Paul v. Virginia, 8 Wall. 168, 75 U. S. 182; Cooper Mfg. Co. v. Ferguson, 113 U. S. 727, 113 U. S. 734, and Crutcher v. Kentucky, 141 U. S. 47, 141 U. S. 56.
"To carry on interstate commerce is not a franchise or a privilege granted by the state; it is a right which every citizen of the United States is entitled to exercise under the Constitution and laws of the United States, and that the accession of mere corporate facilities, as a matter of convenience in carrying on their business, cannot have the effect of depriving them of such right, unless Congress should see fit to interpose some contrary regulation on the subject"
to sue and defend in the courts is a question which the exigencies of this case do not require to be indefinitely decided. It is sufficient to say that the requirement of the statement mentioned in § 1283 [§ 1358, Gen.Stat. 1905] of the statute imposes a direct burden on the plaintiff's right to engage in interstate business, and therefore is in violation of its constitutional rights. It is the established doctrine of this Court that a state may not, in any form or under any guise, directly burden the prosecution of interstate business. But such a burden is imposed when the corporation of another state, lawfully engaged in interstate commerce, is required, as a condition of its right to prosecute its business in Kansas, to make and file a statement setting forth certain facts which the state, confessedly, could not control by legislation. It results that the provision as to the statement mentioned in § 1283 [§ 1358, Gen.Stat. 1905] must fall before the Constitution of the United States, and with it -- according to the established rules of statutory construction -- must fall that part of the same section which provides that the obtaining of the certificate of the Secretary of State that such statement has been properly made shall be a condition precedent to the right of the plaintiff to maintain an action in the courts of Kansas."
Following the decision in that case, we held that the statute upon which the plea in abatement was rested is unconstitutional and void, and that the plea should not have been sustained, but overruled.
The judgment is reversed as to the remaining plaintiffs in error, and the case is remanded for further proceedings not inconsistent with this opinion.
MR. JUSTICE PITNEY did not hear the argument or participate in the decision of this case.

References: § 1011
 § 22
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 § 22
 § 22
 § 5600
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 § 1011
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 § 1358
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 § 1283
 § 1283