STATE ex rel. Harold D. LINTHICUM and Delmar Giles, d/b/a Bluff City Shows, Relators, v. The Honorable Michael B. CALVIN, Division 1, Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, Missouri, Respondent.
No. SC 83558
Supreme Court of Missouri, En Banc.
Oct. 23, 2001.
57 S.W.3d 855
Paul J. Passanante, Jason E. Dodson, John G. Simon, St. Louis, for Respondent.
PER CURIAM.
Relators, Harold D. Linthicum, and Delmar Giles, d/b/a Bluff City Shows, ask this Court for an extraordinary writ prohibiting respondent from proceeding in an underlying tort case brought against them. They contend that the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis deprived them of their right to proper venue as provided in chapter 508, RSMo 2000. This Court has jurisdiction.
I. FACTS
On August 28, 1998, Plaintiff Kathy Penny filed a one-count petition in negligence against Defendant Delmar Giles, d/b/a Bluff City Shows, in the Circuit Court of St. Francois County, Missouri, alleging that she sustained personal injuries as a result of a fall from the car of a Ferris wheel operated by Defendant Giles at the St. Francois County Fair in Farmingtоn, Missouri. Plaintiff subsequently filed amended petitions in the St. Francois County case, naming Defendants Forsythe and Dowis Rides, Inc., and Reithoffer Shows, Inc., two previous owners of the Ferris wheel, as additional parties. On June 13, 2000, after substantial discovery, Plaintiff voluntarily dismissed the St. Francois County lawsuit without prejudice.
On June 20, 2000, Plaintiff refiled her petition in the Circuit Court of the City of St. Louis, naming only one defendant, Harold Linthicum, an employee of Defendant Giles. Linthicum is a citizen and resident of Arkansas. Giles resides in Butler County, Missouri. The allegations against Linthicum were that he operated the Ferris wheel and maintained it on or about the time Plaintiff allegedly was hurt. Plaintiff claimed that venue in the City was proper under
The following day, June 21, 2000, Plaintiff requested and was granted leave to amend her petition to add as defendants Relator Giles and the other defendants from the St. Francois County case, as well as two additional defendants.
Thereafter, Relators Linthicum and Giles timely filed a motion to transfer venue, which was denied on February 1, 2001. Relators then filed a petition for writ of prohibition in the Missouri Court of Appeals, Eastern District, which also was denied. The writ petition was refiled in this Court, which issued its preliminary writ.
II. ANALYSIS
A.
Prohibition is a discretionary writ, and there is no right to have the writ issued. State ex rel. K-Mart Corp. v. Holliger, 986 S.W.2d 165, 169 (Mo. banc 1999).
B.
Venue in Missouri is determined solely by statute.State ex rel. Rothwell v. Gallagher, 816 S.W.2d 194, 196 (Mo. banc 1991). The purpose of the venue statutes is to provide a convenient, logical, and orderly forum for litigation. Id. The general venue statute in Missouri is
Suits instituted by summons shall, except as otherwise providеd by law, be brought:
(1) When the defendant is a resident of the state, either in the county within which the defendant resides, or in the county within which the plaintiff resides, and the defendant may be found;
(2) When there are several defendants, and they reside in different counties, the suit may be brought in any such county;
(3) When there are several defendants, some residents and others nonresidents of the state, suit may be brought in any county in this state in which any defendant resides;
(4) When all the defendants are nonresidents of the state, suit may be brought in any county in this state;
(5) Any action, local or transitory, in which any county shall be plaintiff, may be commenced and prosecuted to final judgment in the county in which the defendant or defendants reside, or in the county suing and where the defendants, or one of them, may be found;
(6) In all tort actions the suit may be brought in the county where the cause of action accrued regardless of the residence of the parties, and process therein shall be issued by the court of such county and may be served in any county within the state; provided, however, that in any action for defamation or for invasion of privacy the cause of action shall be deemed to have accrued in the county in which the defamation or invasion was first published.
In State ex rel. DePaul Health Ctr. v. Mummert, 870 S.W.2d 820 (Mo. banc 1994), this Court held that venue is determined as the case stands when brought.DePaul Health Ctr., 870 S.W.2d at 823.1 Relying on DePaul, the circuit court in this case concluded that if venue was proper when the petition was originally brought, a subsequent amendment to the petition to add parties was irrelevant for purposes of venue. Under this interpretation, a plaintiff could sue a Missouri resident in any of over one hundred venues by simply suing a nonresident under
The primary rule of statutory construction is to ascertain the intent of the legislature from the language used, to give effect to that intent if possible, and to consider the words used in their plain and
The circuit court‘s analysis of the word brought assumed a temporal distinction that conferred different venue rights on Missouri defendants depending on whether the plaintiff initially named or subsequently added them to the lawsuit. This construction is contrary to both the plain language of the statute and to the legislature‘s purpose in delineating the six venue scenarios found in
For purposes of
III. CONCLUSION
An absolute writ shall issue ordering the circuit court to reconsider the propriety of venue as of the day the underlying petition was amended to include Missouri residents.
LIMBAUGH, C.J., HOLSTEIN, BENTON and PRICE, JJ., concur; WOLFF, J., concurs in part and dissents in part in separate opinion filed; LAURA DENVIR STITH, J., concurs in opinion of WOLFF, J.; LAURA DENVIR STITH, J., concurs in part and dissents in part in separate opinion filed; WOLFF, J., concurs in opinion of LAURA DENVIR STITH, J.; WHITE, J., dissents in separate opinion filed; WOLFF and LAURA DENVIR STITH, JJ., concur in opinion of WHITE, J.
MICHAEL A. WOLFF, Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I join in Judge Stith‘s opinion concurring in part and dissenting in part. I also join in Judge White‘s dissenting opinion.
Venue in Missouri is solely a function of statute, as the principal opinion points out. It is not a matter of convenience, but rather the choice of an appropriate forum. State ex rel. Public Service Commission v. Dolly, 50 S.W.3d 774, 777 (Mo. banc 2001).
From an advocate‘s perspective, venue in personal injury cases is all about jurors.1 The plaintiff‘s lawyer‘s two-step maneuver after this case was filed in the city was designed to lay venue in the city of St. Louis.
The preponderance of anecdotal evidence is that jurors in the city of St. Louis are far more favorably disposed toward injured plaintiffs’ claims than are their counterparts in suburban St. Louis County or in most оther counties in the state.2
Differences in the composition of juries from one county to another are commonly noted. Arm-chair psychologists and legitimate social scientists study the effects of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, gender, and other factors, including whether the prospective juror lives in a rural or urban area, and draw conclusions about those differences.3
The jury is the ultimate democratic institution, and its members reflect the values of their respective communities.
There should be no difference between the community represented by those selected for jury service in the city and in the county. Whether residents of the city or the county, St. Louisans are now, like it or not, part of the same community. When the current Missouri Constitution was adopted in 1945, the city had a population, as of the 1940 census, of 816,048, while the county‘s population was 274,230. The county was still largely rural, with several distinct towns. It had been separated from the city fоr nearly 75 years.4
With the passage of 56 years since the 1945 Constitution, the distinctions have blurred. There are now, as of the 2000 census, 1,016,315 persons residing in the county, while the city‘s 2000 census was 348,189, and continuing to decrease, although the rate of population loss may be slowing.5 St. Louis County is largely urban, and the boundaries between city and county are hard to discern without the aid of street signs. By the peculiar geography of the St. Louis area, many residents of
The city of St. Louis is recognized as a distinct entity in the Missouri Constitution; article VI, section 31. Visionaries may speak of the benefits of rejoining the city and county for governmental purposes, but governmental fragmentation may be a fact of life not likely to change in the near future. There are, after all, nearly 100 municipalities in the St. Louis city-county area, as well as hundreds of other entities of loсal government. For many people, that fragmented pattern of governance is functional in keeping governments small and highly localized.
But whatever the benefits and drawbacks to fragmented governance in this metropolitan area, they are wholly unrelated to issues of jury service. As to juries, the goal is a diverse cross-section widely representative of the community at large. To achieve this goal, the laws relating to juries should be changed to eliminate the distinction between city and county jurors by combining the jurors into a single jury pool.
The distinction between city jurors and county jurors has a tendency to skew the jury composition of those separate jurisdictions so as to be unrepresentative of the community at large. The population changes in the city and the county since 1945 give these separate jurisdictions jury pools that appear to be substantially segregated by race and socioeconomic status,6 even though the county‘s population has become more diverse in recent years.
The clearest way to address the problem is to combine the jury pools so that jurors in both the city and county are selected from the same pool of eligible persons.
That would lead not only to a greater representation in the jury pool of the community as a whole, but would also ease the tremendously disproportionate burden carried by the citizens of St. Louis city who are called to jury service. In the year 1999-2000, 26,160 residents of the city appeared for jury service. There were 1,388 jury trial days.7
By stark contrast, St. Louis County, with a 2000 census population of 1,016,315, received service from about half the number of prospective jurors as did the city. There were 13,720 county residents who appeared for jury service. St. Louis County compiled 805 total jury trial days in the 1999-2000 fiscal year.
Civil cases in the city accounted for 733 total jury trial days of the 1,388 total, with 655 total jury trial days on criminal cases. In the сounty, 529 jury trial days were taken up by civil matters, and 276 jury trial days were spent on criminal cases.7
The 26,160 persons who appeared for jury service in the city of St. Louis in that year constituted approximately 10.7% of the city‘s adult (21 and over) population of 242,835. The age 21 is used because that is when citizens become eligible for jury service under
Again by contrast, the 13,720 St. Louis countians who appeared for jury service in that year constituted less than 2% of the county‘s 21-and-over population of 722,371.
Combining jury pools in the city and county appears to be a matter of statute for civil juries.8 As to the criminal case juries, a constitutional change may be needed.9
Changes in the law and in the Constitution are not easily achieved. The status quo is powerful. But the effort is worth making.10
The right of trial by jury—of 12 persons representing the community—is subject to attack.11 This Court has recently implemented changes in the jury system recommended by a Civil Jury Study Committee in order to make juries more effective and jurors’ service more accommodating and meaningful to those who serve.
In contrast to reforms that make jury service more effective and meaningful, the change suggested here is more fundamental and is directed to the viability of the jury trial system. If the jury system and number of cases stay about the same in the city of St. Louis, and the population continues to decrease,12 the right to trial by jury will be at risk. In order to
Our jury system is precious. Though its roots are in the Common Law courts of England, its contemporary role is particularly American. It is a fundamental source of legitimacy for the judicial system and a powerful tool to educate the citizens of a democracy.13 The time and effort that citizens give to this duty ought to be fairly shared in the metropolitan area that includes St. Louis city and county. From the data recited here, it is quite clear that jury service may be disproportionately costly for some of our citizens who reside in the city of St. Louis.
More importantly, juries ought to be drawn from both city and county so that they may more accurately reflect the racial, ethnic, religious, economic, geographic diversity of the entire St. Louis community.14
Combining the jury pools of the city and county would eliminate the major reason for venue manipulation in these jurisdictions. Moreover, the privilege and burden of jury service would be more evenly distributed in the St. Louis community, and the right to trial by jury would be more easily preserved.
LAURA DENVIR STITH, Judge, concurring in part and dissenting in part.
I concur in the separate opinions of Judges White and Wolff, and in the portion of the principal opinion that holds that venue does not change when a party is dropped or when a third-party defendant is added. I also write separately to express my disagreement with the principal opinion‘s conclusion that venue may be redetermined whenever a plaintiff adds another defendant to a case already filed.
The principal opinion reasons that [a]lthough a suit is brought agаinst the original defendants when the petition is initially filed, in like manner, it is also brought against subsequent defendants when they are added to the lawsuit by amendment. Op. at 858. It says that the plain language of the statute requires that a court must redetermine venue, if requested to do so, each time plaintiff adds a new defendant to the case.
I respectfully disagree with this reasoning. By the principal opinion‘s interpretation, the addition of a new defendant is treated as the bringing of a different suit. But, in fact, the addition of the party is taking place within the same suit, already instituted. Neither State ex rel. DePaul Health Center v. Mummert, 870 S.W.2d 820 (Mo. banc 1994), nor any other decision of this Court, has previously equated adding a party with filing a new suit. And, as Judge White‘s analysis of prior decisions demonstrates, no other decision of this Court, until today, has interpreted the language of
The legislature‘s intent to have a single determination of venue at the initiation of the suit is supported by the legislature‘s interchangeable use of the words brought, commenced and instituted in other sections of Chapter 508 dealing with venue. For example, while
In sum, the term brought has been equated with instituted or commenced, by the legislature, the Revisor, and even BLACK‘S LAW DICTIONARY, quoted above. Self-evidently, all these terms are intended to refer to when suit is first filed and to establish the proper venue of the action at that time. Had the legislаture wanted venue to be redeterminable whenever parties were added, it would have been easy to provide for such a mechanism. The legislature could have entitled
The legislature‘s intent to choose the time suit is brought as the time to determine venue, and not to provide for redetermination of that question as the suit evolves, is thus manifest in the language of
The principal opinion nonetheless suggests that its approach is preferable because it makes venue depend on the residency of defendants, and the legislature‘s desire to make residency determinative is evident from
Op. at 858. The principal opinion acknowledges the long-standing rule, based on State ex rel. Garrison Wagner Co. v. Schaaf, 528 S.W.2d 438, 442 (Mo. banc 1975), that the institution of a third-party claim does not affect venue because section 508.010 refers only to plaintiff and defendant, not to third-party defendants. See also State ex rel. Fitting v. Adolf, 704 S.W.2d 271, 271, 273 (Mo. banc 1986); State ex rel. Missouri Property & Cas. Ins. Guar. Ass‘n v. Brown, 900 S.W.2d 268, 274-75 (Mo.App. W.D.1995). This rule is relevant here because, were it the legislature‘s intent that the courts redetermine venue based on the residence of each newly-joined party, then the legislature would also have so provided in the case of third-party defendants.
Moreover, logically, if the legislature‘s purpose were to give the same rights to object to venue to later-named defendants as are given to those sued when suit is first filed, then would not the law also require the courts to redetermine venue when a defendant was dropped, or when a third-party defendant was added? Of coursе, it does not, and should not. The purpose of the venue statutes is to provide a convenient, logical, and orderly forum for the litigation itself, DePaul Health Center, 870 S.W.2d at 822, not just for a particular party. Thus, despite the changes in venue law approved today, the residence of third-party defendants continues to be irrelevant to venue, and the opinion reaffirms the rule set out in DePaul Health Center that dropping a defendant does not affect venue.1
But, surely, there is little point in referring to a particular defendant‘s venue rights as a basis for refashioning our venue laws in the manner the principal opinion proposes, when under that approach the redetermination will occur only if it is the plaintiff, not a third-party plaintiff, who adds a new party defendant, when a redetermination can be made regardless of whether the new party is even served, and regardless of the effect of the transfer on those already in a long-pending action. There is also a good deal of elegance to the simplicity of a rule that states that the time of the original filing of the suit is the point—the only point—at which venue is to be determined.
There are many who criticize this practice, and many who support it.2 To the extent that the principal opinion‘s purpose in changing venue rules is to create a set of rules that are not capable of manipulation in this or another manner, to the advantage or disadvantage of one side or the other, few wоuld disagree with its goal. But, it does so at the cost of rendering venue subject to redetermination in other circumstances, too, through a process that itself can be subjected to manipulation.
Moreover, such a drastic reshaping of Missouri venue law is not necessary to decide this case, in which the additional instate defendants were added before service was even effected on the out-of-state defendant originally sued. If this procedure troubles the Court, it could be resolved simply by holding that when an amended pleading has been filed before service of the original petition, or the filing of the original defendant‘s answer, then the amended pleading, rather than the original pleading, becomes the basis for determining venue, as that is the pleading which defendant must answer.3 This simple approach would resolve the issue in this case, and, indeed, in most of the writs filed in this Court that raise the issue of pretensive non-joinder. Instead, the Court has chosen to go well beyond the facts of this case, and changes venue law for any case in which a defendant is added after suit is filed.
Appellate courts are normally loath to reach out in this manner, for to do so runs the risk of creating new problems when the new rule is applied in situations not then before the Court. That is a matter of concern here. While the principal opinion‘s approach does avoid some of the difficulties associated with DePaul Health Center‘s simpler, more efficient admonition that venue will be determined when suit is brought, it produces myriad, equally complex and troublesome problems of its own. For example:
1. Assume that a plaintiff had a suit on file in County A for eighteen months against a non-resident and during discovery has learned that another actor may be liable in addition to, or in place of, the original defendants. Or, a plaintiff learns
2. Assume plaintiff originally sued one non-resident defendant. Later, plaintiff adds a local defendant by filing an amended petition, only to dismiss that added defendant before service. As there was no service, the court never gained jurisdiction over the added defendant. Oney v. Pattison, 747 S.W.2d 137, 141 (Mo. banc 1988). Yet, because venue is determined at the time of filing, not at the time of service,4 and because, under the principal opinion‘s approach, amending to name a new defendant now affects venue, but dropping a defendant does not, then that defendant‘s one-or-two-day presence as an unserved party is determinative of venue. It means that, although a key rationale for adoption of the principal opinion‘s new venue rule is that a defendant should have a say in determining the venue of a suit in which he or she has been joined, based on his or her residency, venue of the suit may in fact be determined by the residency of a defendant over whom the court never acquired jurisdiction and to whom the convenience of the location of the suit is thus absolutely irrelevant and unimportant.
3. When a defendant, as third-party plaintiff, brings in a third-party defendant, venue is unaffected. See note 1, supra. If the plaintiff later amends to make a claim directly against a third-party defendant, as suggested above, has a new action been brought and may venue be raised anew with the realignment of the third-party defendant as an ordinary defendant? In the past the answer was clearly no, and under the principal opinion it would remain no, as the third-party defendant is already in the suit, and has been brought there by defendant. But, plaintiff will have to file an amended petition to sue that new party directly, and this is sure to engender yet more litigation over this issue. Indeed, this Court could in the future find plaintiffs in such a case moving for transfer depending on the residence of the third-party brought in by defendant.
4. If the court orders a new party to be joined as a defendant, either as a party to be joined if feasible under Rule 52.04, or as a person permitted to intervene as of right under Rule 52.12(a), is there a new look at venue? One would presume not, for it is well-established that an injured party may choose whom to sue and cannot be forced to sue other alleged tortfeasors. See, e.g., Krohn v. Redings Mill Firе Dept., 893 S.W.2d 399, 400 (Mo.App. S.D.1995). For this reason, the principal opinion speaks only of redetermining venue when a plaintiff chooses to add a new party defendant. But, if the trial court decides that a party must be joined, the court does not actually
5. Cases and statutes dealing with issues other than venue also use the term brought.5 How will the principal opinion‘s new interpretation of that term affect the interpretation of statutes of limitations? Or how the relation-back doctrine is applied? It is likely that this Court will be addressing these and other issues in the years to come, due to the principal opinion‘s reading of the word brought today.
Whether these and the other problems with the approach adopted by the principal opinion are worse than the difficulties that have arisen under the legislature‘s approach and this Court‘s prior cases is, of course, a subjective matter about which the members of this Court can, and do, reasonably disagree. But, the existence of these problems highlights the fact that venue is a very complex issue, which requires consideration of competing interests in a wide variety of contexts. This task is better suited to the legislature than to adjudication on a case-by-case basis. That is why the legislature, not the court system, has traditionally balanced the competing policy concerns in this area, and chosen the approach that it finds best serves the public. See Budding v. SSM Healthcare System, 19 S.W.3d 678, 682 (Mo. banc 2000) (when the legislature has spoken on the subject, the courts must defer to its determinations of public policy). This Court should follow this principle here, and not substitute its judgment for that of the legislature.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent from so much of the principal opinion as provides that venue shall be redеtermined whenever plaintiff adds a defendant.
RONNIE L. WHITE, Judge, dissenting.
I respectfully dissent. The principal opinion concludes that for purposes of venue a suit is brought both when an original petition is filed and re-brought anytime an additional defendant is added by amendment. The principal opinion sanctions this fluid concept of when a suit is brought to achieve its desired end of limiting the forum selection capacity granted to the attorneys of this State by our general assembly.
Absent a statutory definition, the words used in the statute will be given their plain and ordinary meaning as derived from the dictionary.1 The word brought is the past tense and past participle of bring. AMERICAN HERITAGE‘s multiple definitions of the word bring convey a temporal element that is best summarized by the definition to give rise to, and its past participle brought clearly indicates an event that is no longer current or existed or occurred in an earlier time.2
Other dictionaries define the word bring as meaning to advance, cause,
While the majority opinion concedes that the word commenced is commonly deemed to be synonymous with the word brought, it fails to examine the definition of this interchangeable word. The word commence means to begin, start, come into existence, or to have a beginning.6 BLACK‘S LAW DICTIONARY articulates the legal definition of commence as being: To initiate by performing the first act or step. To begin, institute or start. Civil action in most jurisdictions is commenced by filing a complaint with the court. Fed.R.Civil P. 3.7
Indeed, Missouri is just such a jurisdiction and recognizes that a civil action is brought at the moment of the first step of filing a petition. Rule 53 entitled Commencement of Civil Action states, A civil action is commenced by filing a petition with the court. There is no language in the Court‘s rules indicating that a civil action is re-commenced or re-brought upon the filing of an amended pеtition.
The interpretation that the original filing of a lawsuit is the time in which suit is brought or commenced finds statutory support in
The temporal limitation accompanying the word brought also finds repetitious support and expansion from this very Court. In State ex rel. DePaul Health Center v. Mummert, this Court stated that venue is determined as the case stands when brought . . . .9 The word when, means at what time, at which time, as soon as, whenever, and during the time at which.10 By adding the word when this Court reinforced the temporal limitation already imposed by the word brought. Thus, a suit is brought at which time it comes into existence with the first step of filing the initial petition with the court.
In DePaul, this Court was referring to the original date the suit was filed when it held that venue is determined as the case stands when brought.11 Reference to the original filing is not only articulated by the majority, but is plainly evidenced
The progeny of DePaul have not only followed but have expanded this Court‘s prior and correct reasoning that brought refers to the original date of filing the suit. In State ex rel. Bunker Resource, Recycling and Reclamation, Inc. v. Dierker, 955 S.W.2d 931 (Mo. banc 1997), this Court found venue under
In State ex rel. Breckenridge v. Sweeney,16 citing DePaul, this Court distinguished venue in terms of the party‘s residency from the sufficiency of the pleadings. The Court stated, The statute [
In State ex rel. Palmer by Palmer v. Goeke,18 the court of appeals, following DePaul, also determined the original filing or commencement of the suit determined the appropriate venue regardless of the fact that the petitioner changed residence. The court held so even though transfer to a new forum after the change of residence could be more convenient for all of the parties.19
Another consideration noted by the Palmer court concerned the fact that a second identical action had been filed. The court stated in part:
Also significant to our decision is the fact that Relator‘s paternity action was filed before Mother‘s action. As noted earlier, the two actions are identical in substance and subject matter. When two suits are filed rеlating to a dispute involving the same subject matter between the same parties in two Missouri circuit courts of proper venue and concurrent jurisdiction, the court in which the first petition is filed becomes vested with exclusive jurisdiction over the matter to the exclusion of all other courts.20
Today‘s holding plays legal havoc in this situation. What if a new defendant from a different residence is added after multiple identical suits have been filed and jurisdiction and venue had already vested in one forum? Under the principal opinion the suit will have been re-brought yet anoth-
Other decisions citing DePaul for determining venue at the time a suit was originally filed include:
Belton Wrecking & Salvage Co. v. David Orf, Inc., 983 S.W.2d 541, 547 (Mo.App. 1998) (venue for confirmation of arbitration award was proper in court where original action filed).
Threats v. General Motors Corp., 890 S.W.2d 327, 329 (Mo.App. 1994) (venue remained proper for this action despite the dismissal of one defеndant as venue was apparently proper under
State ex rel. Sims v. Sanders, 886 S.W.2d 718, 719, n. 1 (Mo.App. 1994) (citing DePaul Relator concedes that residence for venue purposes is determined at the time suit is filed and not affected by a subsequent change in residence).
State ex rel. Santoya v. Edwards, 879 S.W.2d 775, 776-77 (Mo.App. 1994) (venue remained proper despite the dismissal of one defendant as venue was proper under
Either the majority has overruled these cases sub silentio, or the opinion produces the incongruous result that the word brought is capable of two simultaneous meanings in its singular use in
Besides the tenets of statutory construction, the Court‘s rules, and Missouri case precedent, all of which support the interpretation that suit is brought at the time of original filing, there is additional support by way of analogy to the interpretation of federal venue law. The federal courts have consistently held that venue, under
Even disavowing this comparison and overruling all of the existing Missouri case precedent interpreting
The majority opinion is contrary to the rules of statutory construction, the rules of the court, and the prior case precedent set by this very Court. The principal opinion‘s holding today eliminates the bright line rule сoncerning venue and offers in replacement a never-ending and unpredictable tide leaving the parties only to guess as to which courthouse door they ultimately will be washed ashore.
Notes
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE, DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA 285 (Phillip Bradley trans. ed., 1994). 955 S.W.2d 931 (Mo. banc 1997).imbues all classes with a respect for the thing judged and with the notion of right. If these two elements be removed, the love of independence becomes a mere destructive passion. It teaches men to practice equity; every man learns to judge his neighbor as he would himself be judged. And this is especially true of the jury in civil causes; for while the number of persons who have reason to apprehend a criminal prosecution is small, everyone is liable to have a lawsuit. The jury teaches every man not to recoil before the responsibility of his own actions and impresses him with that manly confidence without which no political virtue can exist. It invests each person with a kind of magistracy; it makes them feel the duties which they are bound to discharge towards society and the part which they take in its government. By obliging men to turn their attention to other affairs than their own, it rubs off that private selfishness which is the rust of society.