Mr. Chief Justice White
delivered the opinion of the court.
The plaintiff in error, a corporation called hereafter the Riverside Mills, was sued in North Carolina by the defendant in error, a resident of that State, to recover for personal injuries alleged to have been suffered by him while working in Virginia as an employé in a cotton mill operated by the. Riverside Mills. The summons directed to the corporation was returned by the sheriff served as follows: “by reading and leaving a copy of the within summons'with Thos. B. Fitzgerald, a director of the defendant corporation.” The Riverside Mills filed a special appearance and motion to dismiss in which it prayed for the striking out of the return of service for the reason that *191 “the defendant is a foreign corporation, not doing business in North Carolina, and has not been domesticated and has no agent upon whom service can be made and that the service of the summons is invalid and does not amount to due process of law as against this defendant.” This motion was supported by an affidavit of a person styling himself secretary and treasurer of the company stating the facts to be that the corporation was a Virginia one, had its place of business in Virginia,' carried on its factory there, had never transacted business in North Carolina, had no property there and that the person upon whom service was made, although he was a director of the corporation and was a resident of North Carolina, had never transacted any business in that State for the corporation. The motion to strike out was refused although the court found the facts to be in accordance with the statement made in the motion and in the affidavit. The defendant answered. There was a trial to a jury and despite the insistence upon the invalidity of the summons, there was a verdict against the Riverside Mills to which it prosecuted error to the Supreme Court of North Carolina. For the purpose of that review an agreed case was made in which the facts were- 1 found to be as stated in the affidavit sup-' porting the motion to strike out and in considering the case the court below stating the same facts reviewed the ruling of the trial court upon that premise.
Coming first to consider the statutes of North Carolina and various decisions of that State construing and applying them, the court held that as the plaintiff was a resident of the State and the director upon whom the summons was served also resided in the State, the summons was authorized, wholly irrespective of whether the foreign corporation had transacted any business in the State, had any'property in the State, or whether the resident director was carrying on business for the corporation in North Carolina or had done so. The court came then to
*192
consider decisions of this court which it deemed related to the question under consideration, for the purpose of testing how far the due process clause relied upon .operated from a Federal point of view, that is, the Constitution of the United States, to dominate and modify, if at all, the state rule. In doing so reference was made to the ruling in
Goldey
v.
Morning News,
Was error committed in deciding that consistently with the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment there was jurisdiction to enter against the defendant a money judgment, even although by implied reservation its effect was limited to the confines of the State and the extent to which the judgment as so rendered was susceptible of being executed was left open for future consideration when the attempt to enforce the judgment would give rise to the necessity for its solution?
That to condemn without a hearing is repugnant to. the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment needs nothing but statement. Equally well settled is it that the courts of one State cannot without a violation of the due process clause, extend their authority beyond their jurisdiction so as to condemn the resident of another State' when neither his person nor his property is within the' jurisdiction of the court rendering the judgment, since that doctrine was long ago established by the decision in
Pennoyer
v.
Neff,
Whatever long ago may have been the difficulty in applying the principles of
Pennoyer
v.
Neff
to corporations, that is, in determining when, if at all, a eorporationcreated by the laws of one State could be sued in the courts of another sovereignty, because of the conception that as an ideal being a corporation could not migrate and its officers in going into another sovereignty did not take with them their power to represent the corporation, such difficulty ceased to exist with the decision of this court rendered more than thirty years ago in
St. Clair
v.
Cox,
It is self-evident that the application of these settled principles establishes the error of the decision of the court below unless it be that the distinction upon which the court acted be well founded, that is, that the enforcement of due process under the Fourteenth Amendment was without influence upon the power to render the judgment since that limitation was pertinent only to the determination of when and how the judgment after it was rendered could be enforced. But this doctrine while admitting the operation of the due process clause, simply declines to make it effective. That is to say, it recognizes the right to invoke the protection of the clause but denies its. re *196 medial efficiency by postponing its operation and thus permitting that to be done which if the constitutional guarantee were applied would be absolutely prohibited. -But the obvious answer to the proposition is that wherever a provision of the Constitution is applicable the duty to enforce it is imperative and all-embracing and no act which it forbids may therefore be permitted. If the suggestion be that although under the jurisdiction which was exerted in form a money judgment, was entered, as no harm could result until the execution, therefore no occasion for applying the due process clause arose, it suffices to say that the proposition but assumes the issue for decision since the very act of fixing by judicial action without a- hearing a sum due, even although the method of execution be left open, would be in and of itself a manifestation of power repugnant to the due process clause.
It is however, unnecessary to pursue the subject from an original point of view, since in
Pennoyer v.Neff, supra,
among other things it was. said that "proceedings in a court of justice tp determine the personal rights and obligations of parties over whom that court has no jurisdiction do not constitute due process of law.” And see
Mutual Life Insurance Co.
v.
Spratley,
Reversed.
Notes
St. Clair
v.
Cox,
