Court Opinion

ID: 9718016
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 07:15:01.469372+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:23:56.839844
License: Public Domain

Rawlings, J.
I respectfully dissent. If plaintiff had a cause of action against defendants prior to enactment of chapter 325, Laws of the Sixtieth General Assembly, then that Act simply served to accord him a new local forum. This is procedural.
And the fact that the aforesaid Act, in addition to mailing of notice, designates the Secretary of State as process agent for any in-state offending foreign corporation, simply serves to provide a double-barreled guarantee of notice.
Furthermore the agency concept employed by those authorities cited in the majority opinion, stemming from the designation of the Secretary of State as a process agent is, in my humble opinion, mere fiction. It changes the procedural aspect of the situation not one bit. To hold otherwise is to indulge, in part at least, in the additional fiction that a defendant foreign corporation would not have shipped products into the state or would not have contracted with an Iowa resident, had the legislative enactment here involved been then in existence.
There is nothing in the subject law which discloses the legislature intended it to be applied prospectively and not retrospectively.
In fact the self-evident intendment of the law is to correct an apparent evil by providing injured or damaged Iowa residents a local forum and a constitutionally adequate method by *689which to effect process rather than compel them to seek redress, at additional cost and inconvenience, in some remote jurisdiction.
I would hold the Act with which we are here concerned operates both prospectively and retroactively.
In support of the foregoing see McGee v. International Life Insurance Co., 355 U. S. 220, 78 S. Ct. 199, 2 L. Ed.2d 223; International Shoe Co. v. Washington, 326 U. S. 310, 66 S. Ct. 154, 90 L. Ed. 95, 161 A. L. R. 1057; United States v. Schooner Peggy, 5 U. S. 103, 109, 2 L. Ed. 49; Appleby v. Farmers State Bank of Dows, 244 Iowa 288, 293-297, 56 N.W.2d 917; Bascom v. District Court, 231 Iowa 360, 362-365, 1 N.W.2d 220; Haskel v. City of Burlington, 30 Iowa 232, 233, 234; Langdeau v. Narragansett Insurance Co., 96 R. I. 276, 191 A.2d 28, 30, 31; 49 Iowa Law Review 976, 978-982; 44 Iowa Law Review 249, 265; 82 C. J. S., Statutes, sections 416-422, pages 992-1000; 50 Am. Jur., Statutes, section 482, page 505; and 16 Am. Jur.2d, Constitutional Law, section 427, page 767.
For the reasons stated I would reverse and direct the trial court to overrule the special appearances filed by defendants.
Justice Becker joins in this dissent.