224 Pa. 577 | Pa. | 1909
Opinion by
This was an action of replevin for an amusement device known as a circle swing. The suit was brought by the United States Circle Swing Company against Annette Reynolds and Arthur Frothingham, trading as the Rocky Glen Park Company, a partnership. On June 8, 1906, Annette Reynolds, as the agent of her brother, William B. Reynolds, filed an affidavit that the property replevied belonged to him; and upon this petition, sworn to by Annette Reynolds, the said William B. Reynolds was permitted to intervene as party defendant. Thereafter he filed an affidavit of defense in which he claimed to have bought the property replevied at a landlord’s sale, and that he was at that time the owner of the said property by virtue of the title so acquired. When the case was called for trial William B. Reynolds, by Annette Reynolds, his attorney in fact, presented a petition, asking leave to amend his former affidavit of defense so as to limit his ownership to a small portion of the apparatus, consisting of six cars. His claim to this much was conceded by the plaintiffs. Upon the trial the court directed the jury to be sworn as to William B. Reynolds alone
It is also contended that the court below erred in permitting the jury to be sworn as to William B. Reynolds alone, for the reason that Annette Reynolds and Arthur Frothingham, the original defendants, had filed what was alleged to be a plea in abatement, in which they averred that the suit was brought in the name of a fictitious person, and that there was no such corporation as the United States Circle Swing Company. This was not a plea in abatement, for its effect would be, not merely to abate this particular suit, but to destroy the right
In the eighteenth assignment of error, complaint is made of the ruling of the court below as to the right of the plaintiffs to bring this action, without being properly registered under the Act of April 22, 1874, P. L. 108. But the question does not seem to have been raised in the affidavit of defense, and was not apparently an issue in the case. But in so far as the facts of this case go, they disclose nothing which would forbid the plaintiff, as a foreign corporation, to maintain an action in the courts of Pennsylvania, to recover its personal property. William B. Reynolds who claimed and retained the property, had no contract relations with the plaintiffs, and he would therefore have no standing to object that the plaintiff corporation was doing business in this state, without having complied with the registration act. This principle is clearly set forth in King Optical Co. v. Royal Insurance Co., 24 Pa. Superior Ct. 527.
It is further contended that objectionable remarks made by