Court Opinion

ID: 9830393
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:10:22.120077+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:20.981899
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION EOR REHEARING.
.It is insisted in the motion for rehearing -that “there was no evidence whatsoever offered or introduced, showing or tending to show, that the defendant, Southern Pacific Company, at the time of the alleged injury, or of the commencement of this suit, or at any time since and up to the present time, had or owned,, or has held or owned, or now has, holds, or owns, any property in the State of Texas subject to or within the jurisdiction of this court, the entire evidence being to the contrary.” The witness Cottingham, introduced by plaintiff in error, testified: “The Southern Pacific Company owns the majority in those companies, Galveston, Harrisburg & San Antonio Bailway Company and Texas & New Orleans Bailroad Company; there is no question about that. The stockholders select the directors of these subordinate companies and the directors select the officers. The Southern Pacific Company is the majority stockholder in these subordinate companies.” It would suggest itself to the minds of most people that if a party owned a controlling interest in a thousand miles of railroad in Texas that it had some property or rights or credits in the State. Ward v. Lathrop, 11 Texas, 287; Battle v. Carter, 44 Texas, 485; Wright v. Ragland, 18 Texas, 289.
" But independent of any question of property in Texas, there was *401evidence tending to show that plaintiff in error was operating a railroad across Texas to California, and our statute (art. 1194, subd. 25), authorizes suits against foreign corporations doing business in this State, in any county where there is an agent of the corporation. Plaintiff in error had an agent in Houston, and a nonresident had the right to bring a suit against it, as it was shown to be doing business in this State. Western Union Tel. Co. v. Clark, 14 Texas Civ. App., 563 (38 S. W., 225).
The case of Southern Pacific Company v. Godfrey, 48 Texas Civ. App., 616 (107 S. W., 1135) is exactly in point in this case on the question of jurisdiction. In that case the injury was inflicted in Arizona on a citizen of that Territory, and he sued in El Paso, Texas. The only marked difference in the case is that in the Godfrey case the present plaintiff in error was anxious to be sued in Harris County, and now that county is repudiated and it is seeking to evade being sued anywhere in Texas. The motion for rehearing is overruled.

Affirmed.

Writ of error refused.