Court Opinion

ID: 9833970
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 23:11:39.484075+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:44:09.994009
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Behearing.
It is true that the principal office of a corporation does often mean the place of the location of the office from which its principal business is to be transacted as designated in its charter, and such office constitutes the place of domicile of the corporation. If this is the only meaning to be attached to the term, a foreign corporation might not have a principal office in Texas. However, our statutes seem to contemplate that a foreign corporation may have such an office in Texas. Article 1314, Bevised gtatutes, contains a provision with reference to a foreign corporation establishing “a general office * * * in this state.” Subdivision 28, art. 1830, Bevised gtatutes, provides that a foreign corporation may be sued in a county “in which the principal office of such company may be situated,” meaning evidently thereby the office from which its business in the state is directed. The evidence here shows that all of the officers of this corporation resided in Ft. Worth, Tarrant county, Tex., and “out of the office at Ft. Worth proceeded all of the business of the corporation."
We think that Tarrant county can be said to be the principal office of the company in Texas, within the meaning of the general venue statute, and also the special statutes applicable to receiverships for corporations and suits against receivers.
Article 2150, Bevised gtatutes, provides that receivership suits against a corporation “shall be brought in this state in the county where the principal office of said corporation is located.” Article 2146 grants general permission to sue receivers without permission of the court appointing them, and article 2147, as we have construed it, fixes the venue of suits against the receivers of such corporations in the county in which the corporation has its principal office. Perhaps a similar reason that prompted the enactment that an administrator must be sued in the county where the administration proceedings are pending was in the mind of the Legislature in passing this law. The property in each instance is in the custody of the court, being administered for the benefit of creditors and others interested in it, and it is obvious that it might be advantageous in the administration of the estates that suits against the officer of the court administering them should be brought in the county where the property is being administered. We have concluded, as did the court, in the case of Kirby Lumber Co., Receiver v. McClendon, 56 Tex. Civ. App. 279, 120 S. W. 227, that it was the purpose of the Legislature “to restrict suits against receivers of such corporations (that is, corporations other than railway corporations) to the counties in which their principal offices may be situated.”
While subdivision 14, art. 1830, provides that suits to recover land, etc., must be brought in the county in which the land is *614situated, said provision does not affect the' jurisdiction of other courts in such suits. It furnishes only a venue privilege, of which a party may avail himself like any other plea of privilege as to venue. State v. Patterson, 40 S. W. 224, and authorities there cited; Wolfe v. Willingham, 43 Tex. Civ. App. 167, 94 S. W. 362. So that said subdivision 14, art. 1830, is not different from the other imperatives of the venue statute. Subdivision 19, art. 1830, provides that suits against a county shall be brought “in some court * * * within such county.” This provision was made to yield to the special provisions for venue in the statutes regulating injunction proceedings. Little v. Griffin, 33 Tex. Civ. App. 515, 77 S. W. 635. In Neill v. Owen, 3 Tex. 145, this very provision as to suits affecting land was subordinated- to the provision for suits against administrators under the statutory enactments in force at that time. So we think that when it be ascertained that it was the intention of the legislature to restrict suits against receivers of corporations to the counties in which the principal office of such corporation maj'1 be situated, it follows, under principles which we have announced, that the venue thus fixed by the laws governing this particular character of suits will control over the provisions of the general venue statute.
The motion for rehearing will be overruled.