39 N.J.L. 165 | N.J. | 1877
The opinion of the court Avas delivered by
This is a suit upon a judgment recovered by the plaintiff, against the defendant, in the Superior Court of the city of New York. The defence raised
Annexed to the record which the plaintiff produced, and forming part of it, was an affidavit, setting forth that the affiant served, at a certain time therein mentioned, and at a certain specified place in the city of New York, “a copy of the annexed summons, together with the complaint therein mentioned, which is also hereunto annexed,” on the defendant, “ by delivering the same to such defendant personally, and leaving the same with him.” In the body of the judgment,, it is stated that, it appearing “that the summons, with a copy of the complaint, having been duly served ” on the defendant,, and no copy of an answer or demurrer to the complaint having' been served on the plaintiff, on motion of the plaintiff’s attorney, it was adjudged that the plaintiff recover a certain designated sum of money, against the defendant. •
To meet this prima fade case, the defendant offered himself as a witness, and 'testified, in substance, to the following-facts, touching the service of process upon him : that he was in a certain contractor’s office, in the city of New York, when a man came in, and standing within two feet of him, held out to him a paper, saying, there was a paper from the Jar-dines ; that the witness said he did not want any paper from them, and the man then threw the paper on the floor before him ; that he, the defendant, did not pick up the paper, did not read it,, and did not know its contents;. that the man serving it did not tell him w'hat it w?as, nor read it to him... This statement was impugned by testimony adduced by the plaintiff, but in disposing' of the present motion, it will not be necessary to refer to this, as I am entirely satisfied that, by the defendant’s own showing, the judgment in the Superior Court of New York should have been held, as a matter of law, to be absolutely conclusive of his rights in the present controversy.
The attempt, on the side of the defence, was, to vacate air adjudication made by a court of general jurisdiction of another
But it is obvious that the present case is not comprehended in the class of cases which are thus to be taken as having been finally adjudged. It is distinguished from that class by the circumstances that the defendant in this suit was, at the time of the inception of the action in New York, present in person
Upon examining the decisions, and the reasons which have led to them, I am entirely satisfied that a judgment founded on the kind of notice just mentioned, is elsewhere as conclusive, touching the matters it adjudges, as it is in the state in which it is rendered. It is one of the unquestionable prerogatives of every independent government, to prescribe the method by which parties interested shall be apprised of the pendency of proceedings' in its tribunals; and such method can be repudiated, and the adjudication founded thereon can be invalidated, by the courts of other states, only when it is so plainly inefficacious as a means of notification, that its normal operation must, in the main, result in decisions against persons out of the jurisdiction, and who have no knowledge of the danger with which they are threatened. The rule
In the case now before this court, the service of process on the defendant appears to have been a substantial compliance with the law of New York. That law required that a copy of the summons and complaint should be left with the party; it did not prescribe that the person leaving such copy should read it or make known its contents. Such a transcript was tendered to this defendant, and, on his refusal to accept it, the paper was thrown at his feet. Such an act was uncivil, but the paper was certainly left with the defendant, and that was all that the law called for. Such a service, however informal or rude in manner, cannot be declared to be an act utterly void, and the consequence is, the judgment resting upon it must be held to be, both in the domestic and in every foreign jurisdiction, valid and unimpeachable. Therefore, the defence set up at the trial should have been •overruled.
Let a venire de novo issue.