Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/716

 704 FBDEEAL REPORTES. �resented that he possessed any other authority. But in that case the corporation, by having a principal office, a general agent for all purposes, and a local board of directors in New Orleans, was prac- tically domiciled there, and there was no hardship in requiring serv- ice of process to be made on its general agent. It was, besides, proved affirmatively that the agent in the interior had no other authority, and was known to have none other, than to take risks. �On the general principles so ably euforced by Chief Justice Green, I would not feel justified in treating as a nullity the judgment of the court of Louisiana virtually establishing the validity of the service of process on the business agent of a non-resident Insurance Com- pany, issued to commence a suit founded on a transaction with that agent, even if there were no statute in Louisiana authorizing such service. But the statute of that state, passed in 1877, cornes in aid of the general principle, and seems to have expressly rendered such an agent as Taber was, amenable to the process which was served on him. Though the last clause of the first section of that act seems to imply that some one agent of every non-resident Insurance company shall be the person empowered to be served with and to accept service of process for the whole state, yet the act speaks nowhere of a "gen- erai" agent, as the defendant's plea does; and the first clause of sec- tion 1 and the whole tenor of section 4 unite in providing that every agent who does business for a non-resident insurance company in the state, either in taking risks, or i*eceiving premiums, or transacting any business, shall first have been appointed and empowered respecting process, as provided in the first section. If so, then Taber must be pre- sumed to have been so empowered, and the defendant would not be heard to deny that it bas, in respect to him, complied with the re- quirements. of the statute. For a corporation to seek to avoid its own contract by reason of a misnomer is reprehended by Lord Coke as a pernicious novelty, which "till this generation of late times was never read of in any of our books." Sir Moyle Finch' s Case, 6 Bep. 65a. Surely a corporation's neglect to produce a certificate neces- sary to vindicate itself and its agent from crime, should not be al- lowed to exempt it from liability for that agent's aets. �There is abundant authority to show that a suit may be main- tained upon a foreign judgment recovered in a country of which the defendant, even though a natural person, was a citizen or resident, according ta the laws of that country, though process was never in fact served upon him at all; and that such a judgment will not be deemed void as repugnant to natural justice. ��� �