42 Mo. 148 | Mo. | 1868
delivered the opinion of the court.
The plaintiff brought suit against the defendant in the Circuit Court of the county of Howard. Service was had upon an agent of the defendant, who had charge of an agency office of the company in said county. The defendant appeared to the action, and presented to the court a petition and bond praying for a removal of the cause into the Circuit Court of the United States for the District of Missouri, under the act of Congress of the 24th of September, 1789, and alleging that the plaintiff was a citizen of the State of Missouri, and that the defendant was a corporation duly incorporated under the laws of the State of Connecticut, having its principal place of business at Hartford, in that State, and was a citizen thereof, and that the stockholders w-ere not citizens of this State; and that the matter in controversy exceeded the sum of five hundred dollars. The plaintiff objected that the corporation was not a citizen of another State within the
That the corporation may be a citizen of a State, for the purpose of suing and being sued in the courts of the United States, must be considered as settled. (Marshall v. Baltimore and Ohio R.R. Co., 16 How. 314.) When the party makes an application for a removal of the cause, in the manner required by the act of Congress, it is error in the State court to proceed further in the matter, and every subsequent step is coram non judice. (Gordon v. Longest, 16 Peters, 97; Kanouse v. Martin, 15 How. 198.) All further proceedings are erroneous. The laws of this State could not withdraw a citizen of another State from the operation of the act of Congress, nor deprive him of this right of removal of his case to the federal court. (United States v. Holliday, 8 Wal. 407.) It does not appear to have been the intention of the statutes of this State on the subject of foreign insurance agencies to deprive the party of this right. There is nothing in their provisions to preclude him from making this application. Their proper effect is merely to make the service of process on the agent of the company in this State binding on the corporation, for the purpose of giving the court jurisdiction over the party. Such service is to be ‘ ‘ deemed a service upon the
This corporation had filed with the clerk of tire County Court the resolution of the board of directors, as required by the statute. It is this, and not merely the consent of the defendant, that gives the courts jurisdiction. It has been decided that this statute gives all the facilities for serving the ordinary process of law upon the foreign corporation which takes up its residence in this State, by establishing an agency here under its provisions, that would exist in reference to a corporation chartered by the legislature of this State; that it would not be liable to attachment as a non-resident, and that, having such agency and a place of business here, {£ it ceases to be, for all the purposes of this law, a foreign corporation.” (Farnsworth v. Terre Haute, Alton & St. Louis R.R. Co., 29 Mo. 75.) In the case of The City of St. Louis v. The Wiggins Ferry Co., 40 Mo. 580, it was held that although a corporation is a citizen of the State in which it is created, and must dwell in the place of its creation, and can have no legal existence beyond the dominion of the government which created it, yet it may act by agents beyond the bounds of that State, and become, constructively, resident in this State under the statute, not only for the purpose of suing and being sued, but for the purposes of taxation in respect of property found situate here. But it does not follow that the corporation must therefore cease to be a citizen of another State, within the meaning of the act of Congress in question.
There is nothing in the acts of the defendant that can have the effect to estop it from asserting this right. It had subjected itself to the jurisdiction of our courts under the statute laws. It submitted to this jurisdiction by appearing to the suit. It has the
The judgment of the District Court will be affirmed and the cause remanded to the Circuit Court for further proceedings.