Court Opinion

ID: 9418509
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:28:40.141853+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:04.422046
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Brandéis,
dissenting,
with whom Mr. Justice Holmes
concurs.
To sustain the contention that the statute violates the due process clause, it would be necessary to hold that under no conceivable circumstances could the trial court *552have reasonably required the non-resident plaintiff who invoked its process to submit within the State to examination as a witness and to an inspection of relevant books and papers. If the order for examination was legal it was proper to dismiss the suit in case the order was disobeyed. That there may be cases in which oral examination of a plaintiff in the presence of defendant and by counsel familiar with the matter in issue is essential to an adequate presentation of the facts cannot be doubted. If so, it is within the power of a State to require that a plaintiff shall submit to such preliminary examination somewhere. Whether this was a case requiring such examination could be determined properly only upon hearing the parties; and for such hearing opportunity was given by the judge of the trial court. If this was a case in which oral examination and inspection of the documents was essential to an adequate presentation of the matter in controversy, it was necessary, in order to secure it, that either the plaintiff’s secretary should go to Milwaukee for examination, or that defendant and counsel should go to Louisville. Whether, under such circumstances, the plaintiff should in fairness be required to come to the place where, it instituted suit or the defendants be obliged to go with counsel to the plaintiff’s place of residence, was, likewise, a matter which could properly be determined only upon hearing the parties; and this opportunity was given by the judge of the trial court. It cannot be that the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment deprives a State of the power to authorize its courts to so mould their process as to secure, in this way, the adequate presentation of a case.
To sustain the contention that the statute denies to plaintiff equal protection of the laws would seem to require the Court to overrule Blake v. McClung, 172 U. S. 239, 260, 261, and many other cases. The plaintiff, a foreign corporation not doing business within the State *553of Wisconsin, was not a person “ within its jurisdiction.” Moreover, the statutory provision complained of put nonresidents substantially upon an equality with residents. Compare Kane v. New Jersey, 242 U. S. 160, 167. No question of interstate commerce is involved. In my opinion the equal protection clause does not prevent Wisconsin from moulding, in the case of foreign corporations, the details of its judicial procedure to accord with the requirements of justice.