Court Opinion

ID: 9637405
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 15:06:43.977964+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:09:56.086404
License: Public Domain

EDGERTON, Associate Justice
(concurring) .
I concur in Judge RUTLEDGE’S opinion. The view that jurisdiction is lacking here rests ultimately on the decision that it was lacking in Green v. Chicago, B. & Q. R. Co.1 That case seems to me distinguishable. There a western railroad solicited western business, and in some instances collected its price, in Pennsylvania. The plaintiff sought to sue the road in Pennsylvania for personal injuries received in Colorado. If the man in the street were asked whether the sale of western transportation in Pennsylvania amounted to the doing of business there by a railroad whose tracks and trains were thousands of miles away, he would be likely to say no, or at least that the question was doubtful. But if he were told that appellee’s agent in the District solicited District dealers to buy its product for District use, and solicited District consumers to buy it of District dealers, that appellee shipped it to the District, and that its agent supervised its use there (though only in an advisory way) and discussed there its shortcomings and resulting complaints, he would not doubt that appellee was doing business there. Moreover, it is impossible to tell how far the decision in the Green case was due to reluctance to require the defendant and its witnesses to cross the continent and defend in the east a cause'of action which arose in the west.2
Later cases, on the whole, have interpreted “doing business” more broadly. In St. Louis S. W. Ry. Co. of Texas v. Alexander3 and again in Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. v. Reynolds4 the state’s jurisdiction was upheld on facts more or less like those in the Green case. It was also upheld in International Harvester Co. v. Commonwealth of Kentucky5 where orders were solicited within the state but accepted without, goods shipped into the state, and payment sometimes accepted there. The Supreme Court called the Green case “extreme.”6 True, the state’s jurisdiction was denied in People’s Tobacco Co. v. American Tobacco *519Co.;7 but there the local agents of the corporation did not directly, by solicitation or otherwise, initiate contracts with their principal. They merely promoted, among the retail trade, purchases from jobbers who bought from the corporation. Our MacFadden case was closely similar.8
It has been suggested that “the existence of jurisdiction to determine the personal liability of a corporation * * * depends on the reasonableness of its exercise”9 and that “if a foreign corporation voluntarily does business within the state it is bound by reasonable regulations of that business imposed by the state * * * because it is as reasonable and just to subject the corporation to those regulations as though it had consented.”10 In the normal course of business appellee’s agent induced appellants, in the District, to buy its product. They bought it in the District, for use in the District, from a District dealer to whom appellee had sold it. They used it in the District. The alleged defect appeared there and the alleged cause of action presumably arose there. Appellants appear to reside there. I think it is reasonable and just that they should be allowed to enforce their claim there.11

 205 U.S. 530, 27 S.Ct. 595, 51 L.Ed. 916.

 Cf. Davis v. Farmers’ Co-op. Equity Co., 262 U.S. 312, 43 S.Ct. 556, 27 L.Ed. 996.

 227 U.S. 218, 33 S.Ct. 245, 57 L.Ed. 486.

 255 U.S. 565, 41 S.Ct. 446, 65 L.Ed. 788, affirming 224 Mass. 379, 113 N.E. 413; Id., 228 Mass. 584, 117 N.E. 913.

 234 U.S. 579, 34 S.Ct. 944, 58 L.Ed. 1479.

 234 U.S. 579, 586, 34 S.Ct. 944, 58 L.Ed. 1479.

 246 U.S. 79, 38 S.Ct. 233, 62 L.Ed. 287, Ann.Cas.1918C, 537.

 Whitaker v. MacFadden Publications, 70 App.D.C. 165, 105 F.2d 44. Cancelmo v. Seaboard Air Line Ry., 56 App.D.C. 225, 12 F.2d 166, is much like the Green case.

 Farmers’ & Merchants’ Bank of Cattlesburg, Ky. v. Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, D.C., 286 F. 566, 588. Cf. Learned Hand, J., in Smolik v. Philadelphia & Reading Coal & Iron Co., D.C., 222 F. 148.

 Scott, Jurisdiction over Nonresidents Doing Business Within a State, 32 Harv.L.Rev. 871, 883.

 Cf. Tauza v. Susquehanna Coal Co., 220 N.Y. 259, 115 N.E. 915 (Cardozo, J.); American Asphalt Roof Corp. v. Shankland, 205 Iowa 862, 219 N.W. 28, 60 A.L.R. 986.