CONSTITUTIONAL LAW-CIVIL PROCEDURE-DUE PROCESS REQUIREMENTS FOR STATE JURISDICTION OVER FOREIGN CORPORATIONS

Authors

Richard D. Rohr, University of Michigan Law SchoolFollow

Abstract

The plaintiff, a nonresident of Ohio, brought an action in Ohio against the defendant, a sociedad anonima organized under the laws of the Philippine Islands, on claims which neither arose in Ohio nor were connected with the defendant's activities in Ohio. Defendant's president, who was also its general manager and principal stockholder, had returned to his home in Ohio when the company's mining operations were suspended by the Japanese occupation of the Philippines. During the war years, he conducted such business as was possible in Ohio, holding directors' meetings, carrying on correspondence, maintaining bank accounts, but the defendant did not appoint a statutory agent or otherwise consent to service of process in Ohio. Process was served upon the defendant's president, but the Ohio Supreme Court, after ruling that the defendant's legal status under Philippine law was equivalent to that of a corporation, granted defendant's motion to quash service on the ground that a state court had no jurisdiction in personam over a foreign corporation without that corporation's consent when the cause of action did not arise from corporate activities within the state. Despite some question whether the Ohio court's decision rested on federal constitutional grounds, the United States Supreme Court granted certiorari and vacated the judgment, holding: the Fourteenth Amendment Due Process clause does not prohibit state jurisdiction in the instant case, even though the corporation has not expressly consented to jurisdiction and the cause of action was unconnected with the defendant's activities within the state. Perkins v. Benguet Consolidated Mining Co., 342 U.S. 437, 72 S. Ct. 413 (1952).

Recommended Citation

Richard D. Rohr, CONSTITUTIONAL LAW-CIVIL PROCEDURE-DUE PROCESS REQUIREMENTS FOR STATE JURISDICTION OVER FOREIGN CORPORATIONS, 50 Mich. L. Rev. 1381 (1952).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol50/iss8/10