Court Opinion

ID: 9419063
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:45:22.281322+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:14.946384
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Roberts,
dissenting.
The Circuit Court of Appeals, in a careful and discriminating opinion,1 has held that to deny the respondent’s motion to dismiss it from the suit would be to dis*176regard the long settled construction of § 51 of the Judicial .Code and the equally well settled application of that section. I think its judgment should be affirmed.
Whatever may be said in support of the original adoption of a different rule, it has been the law for a century that, as respects the jurisdiction of the federal courts over a corporation in diversity of citizenship cases, the corporation is a citizen and resident of the state of incorporation and of no other state. I do not understand the court’s opinion to repudiate the rule.
The statute which is now § 51 of the Judicial Code took its present form in 1888. In 1892 the court held, in Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co., 145 U. S. 444, 453, that, under the statute, “a corporation, incorporated in one State only, cannot be compelled to answer,- in a Circuit Court of the United States held in another State in which it has a usual place of business, to a civil suit, at law or in equity, brought by a citizen of a different State.” This construction has been followed in this court without deviation and with practical unanimity by the lower federal courts.2
At the next term, in Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, 146 U. S. 202, 205, 207, the ruling was reaffirmed in a case where the defendant had registered as a foreign corporation under a state law and, as a condition of registration, had agreed that service of process might be made upon a designated agent.
*177The earlier Act of 1875 provided that no civil suit could be brought against a defendant in a United States court "in any other district than that whereof he is an inhabitant, or in which he shall be found at the time of serving such process .'. .”
Ex parte Schollenberger, 96 U. S. 369, applied that earlier statute. The court held that a foreign corporation which had registered and consented to the service of process upon a designated agent had thereby agreed “to be found” within the state and might therefore be impleaded in a federal court sitting in the state although it was not a citizen or a resident of the state. The case was cited in the opinions in both the Shaw and the Southern Pacific cases. In the latter the court said, referring to the foreign corporation’s agreement as to service: (pp. 207-8) “It might likewise have subjected the corporation to the jurisdiction of a Circuit Court of the United States held within the State — so long as the Judiciary Acts of the United States allowed it to be sued in the district in which it was found. . . . But such an agreement could not, since Congress (as held in Shaw v. Quincy Mining Co. above cited) has made citizenship of the State, with residence in the district, the sole test of jurisdiction in this class of cases, estop the corporation to set up non-compliance with that-test, when sued in a Circuit Court of the United States.”
In re Keasbey & Mattison Co., 160 U. S. 221, the court held (p. 228): “Under the provision of that act [the earlier act of 1875], which allowed a defendant to be sued in the district of which he was an inhabitant, or in that in which he was found, a corporation could doubtless have been sued either in the district in which it was incorporated, or in any district in which it carried on business a;nd had a general agent.” For this statement the court cited Ex parte Schollenberger, Shaw v. Quincy *178Mining Co., and Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton. The opinions in the last two, and that in the Keasbey case, were written for the court by Mr. Justice Gray, who summed up their effect by saying: “And it is established by the decisions of this court that, within the meaning of this act, a corporation cannot be considered a citizen, an inhabitant or a resident of a State in which it .has not been incorporated; and, consequently, that a corporation incorporated in a State of the Union cannot be compelled to answer to a civil suit, at law or in equity, in a Circuit Court of the United States held in another State, even if the corporation has a usual place of business in that State.”
This interpretation' of § 51 has since remained unchanged. Congress must have known of and acquiesced in the courts’ construction of the section, particularly as there have been efforts to amend it, and no alteration, has been adopted.
Upon principle, and under the authorities, the mere fact that service of process valid under state law can be had on an officer or agent of a foreign corporation doing business within the state is irrelevant; for although the corporation may be served in conformity to local law, it cannot be compelled to try its case in a federal court sitting in the state. I do not understand the opinion of the court to hold to the contrary.
But it is said that registration and designation of an agent upon whom service may be made under compulsion of state law amounts to a waiver of the requirements of § 51 as to venue, or to a consent to be sued in a federal court sitting within the state.
As has been shown by quotation from the opinion, this contention was made in Southern Pacific Co. v. Denton, supra, and was overruled. The holding was one of the alternative grounds' of decision. The Southern Pacific *179case settled the application of § 51, in the circumstances here disclosed, and the decision has never been qualified or overruled. The lower ^federal courts have understood and applied that decision with practical uniformity to enable the foreign corporation to contest the venue of suits against it.3
I see no reason at this late day to attribute a new effect to the statute when Congress has not seen fit to express a view contrary to that embodied in this court’s construction of the law; though this might at any time be done. The principle of stare decisis seems to me to make against such a change.
The court below has analyzed the applicable New York statute and has satisfactorily demonstrated that it deals with service of process on foreign corporations in the courts of New York. The state could not, by its laws, affect the jurisdiction of federal courts or the venue of suits therein, — a matter solely within the control of Congress.
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice McReynolds join in this opinion.

 103 F. 2d 765.

 In re Keasbey & Mattison Co., 160 U. S. 221; Macon Grocery Co. v. Atlantic Coast Line R. Co., 215 U.S. 501; Ladew v. Tennessee Copper Co., 218 U. S. 357; Male v. Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co., 240 U. S. 97; General Investment Co. v. Lake Shore Ry. Co., 260 U. S. 261, 271; Seaboard Rice Milling Co. v. Chicago, R. I. & P. Ry. Co., 270 U. S. 363; Luckett v. Delpark, Inc., 270 U. S. 496; Burnrite Coal, Co. v. Riggs, 274 U. S. 208, 211. The decisions in the federal courts are cited and discussed by the Circuit Court of Appeals, 103 F. 2d 767.

 Some of the cases are cited by the Circuit Court of Appeals in its opinion 103 F. 2d 769.