Court Opinion

ID: 9426396
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:17:46.169974+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:00.705880
License: Public Domain

Me. Chief Justice Burger,
with whom Mr. Justice Rehnquist joins, concurring in the judgment.
Like the Court, I am “unable to say that the treatment of foreign corporations effected by Exception 27 constitutes discrimination repugnant to the Equal Protection Clause.” I reach this conclusion, however, for somewhat different reasons from those the Court sets out.
A plaintiff may sue a foreign or domestic corporation in Texas without proving up a cause of action at a preliminary hearing, by a preponderance of the evidence or by making out a prima facie case. The only “discrimination” between the two types of corporations is that a foreign corporation may be sued without such proof wherever it has “an agency or representative.” Tex. Rev. Civ. Stat., Art. 1995, Exception 27 (1964). In my view, this does not amount to a denial of equal protection. “It is not . . . the mere tribunal into which a person is authorized to proceed by a State which determines whether the equal protection of the law has been afforded, but whether in the tribunals which the State has provided equal laws prevail.” Cincinnati Street R. Co. *647v. Snell, 193 U. S. 30, 37 (1904). To the extent that the statute treats foreign corporations differently, the difference has a rational basis.
“The degree of effective control which the state may exercise over domestic corporations as opposed to foreign corporations in general justifies the classification adopted by the state legislature. The state policy in this respect is not so arbitrary as to be unconstitutional. As regards foreign corporations submitting to a certain degree of control by qualifying to do business in the state, the justification is less evident, but nevertheless the state is not able to give its citizens the same assurance of effective redress for injuries committed by foreign corporations as it can in the case of domestic corporations.” Commercial Ins. Co. v. Adams, 366 S. W. 2d 801, 808-809 (Tex. Civ. App.), writ refused, 369 S. W. 2d 927 (Tex. 1963).
In Bain Peanut Co. v. Pinson, 282 U. S. 499, 501 (1931), this Court held: “The interpretation of constitutional principles must not be too literal. We must remember that the machinery of government would not work if it were not allowed a little play in its joints.” See also Power Mfg. Co. v. Saunders, 274 U. S. 490, 497 (1927) (Holmes, J., dissenting).
Appellee invoked the broad Texas provision for venue of suits against foreign corporations to sue in McLennan County, where appellant had an agent. Had appellant been a domestic corporation, the analogous venue provision would have permitted appellee to bring suit only in the corporation’s home county. In neither instance would appellee have been required to prove up his cause of action in order to show proper venue, and there is thus no difference in the treatment of the two types of corporations beyond the provision for broader *648venue against foreign corporations. In my view, this case raises no other issue.
It is true that, had appellant been a domestic corporation, appellee might also have sued in McLennan County, under a provision that permits suits against domestic corporations to be brought in the county where the plaintiff resided when the cause of action accrued, so long as the corporation has an agent there. Tex. Rev. Civ. St&t., Art. 1995, Exception 23 (1964). Had appellee used Exception 23 to sue this hypothetical domestic corporation outside its home county, the corporation could have required him to prove up his cause of action in order to show proper venue. The Court implies that this difference in treatment would create an equal protection problem were it not for the fact that the state courts do not really require proof of the cause of action by a preponderance of the evidence. Because a similarly situated domestic corporation could not have required ap-pellee to use Exception 23, I fail to see how appellant could have a “right” to the procedures that attend its use, or how appellant was denied anything that a domestic corporation would have had.
It seems to me, in short, that the Court has posed a synthetic problem by casting the issue as it does. To dispose of it, the Court proceeds to rely on a rather novel proposition: so long as counsel for a private litigant states, on oral argument in this Court, that, in spite of what the state courts say to the contrary, the State does not in most cases enforce a law discriminatory on its face, this Court will uphold the law. I cannot believe the Court would accept this proposition in any case that presented a serious issue of equal protection, and I prefer not to rely upon it in this case.