Court Opinion

ID: 3614793
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2016-07-05 23:58:15.359564+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:36:06.252378
License: Public Domain

Venable by contract granted to Combustible Oil Company his rights to drill for oil in certain properties in Mexico. Combustible Oil Company agreed for these rights to give him seventeen (17%) per cent of the oil taken out. Within a few months after oil came, the Pierce Oil Corporation ran 293,016.33 barrels of the oil through its pipe lines to the coast; then to its refinery and sold it. Venable never received any oil nor any pay for it.
The Combustible Oil Company was a creature of the Pierce Oil Corporation which owned all of its stock. *Page 155 
The officers of the Combustible Oil Company were officers or employees of the Pierce Oil Corporation. The Combustible Oil Company had no money. Every dollar was advanced to it by the Pierce Oil Corporation. The contract made with Venable had to be approved by the executive committee of the Pierce Oil Corporation. All matters affecting the acquisition of lands and the production of oil in Mexico by the Combustible Oil Company were referred to the executive committee of the parent company. Officers and employees of the Combustible Oil Company could not be engaged or discharged without the consent of the Pierce Oil Corporation.
The Combustible Oil Company was a mere shell; it was the creature of the Pierce Oil Corporation which dominated and controlled every move it made. Through a contract made in its name, the Pierce Oil Corporation got all the oil. For this purpose was the subsidiary corporation created. Under these circumstances the defendant, the Pierce Oil Corporation, should keep the contract made in the name of its dummy and pay for the oil taken. It should not be permitted to hide behind the mere corporate entity of the Combustible Oil Company which has no existence beyond the corporate name. On such a fundamental proposition as a liability to pay for property taken or purchased, I cannot imagine the law of Mexico being different than the common law of our own country. Referring to Mexico, the Supreme Court of Massachusetts said in Parrot v. MexicanCentral Railway Co. (207 Mass. 184):
"There is every reason why they should be presumed to recognize fundamental principles of right and wrong which lie at the foundation of human society, and to hold that a direct violation of these principles, to the injury of another person, creates a legal liability. If one should sue on a contract for goods sold and delivered in France, upon a promise to pay a certain price for them, it would seem unreasonable that a plaintiff should be *Page 156 
obliged to bring evidence from that country that a breach of such a contract there creates a liability. So if one should sue for damages suffered from an assault and battery, or from a larceny committed there. There ought to be a presumption from common knowledge that a liability exists everywhere in such cases.
"Some courts have gone further, and have held that, in the absence of any proof of the foreign law, the court will administer the law of its own jurisdiction. This is the law in New York, and in the Supreme Court of the United States. Hynes
v. McDermott, 82 N.Y. 41. The Scotland, 105 U.S. 24, 29, 30."
Such conduct as the defendant's may account in part for the recent attitude of the government of Mexico toward oil concessions.
For these reasons I vote for reversal.
CARDOZO, Ch. J., ANDREWS, LEHMAN, KELLOGG and O'BRIEN, JJ., concur in per curiam opinion for affirmance; CRANE, J., dissents in opinion in which POUND, J., concurs.
Judgment affirmed, etc.