Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/40

20 20 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. any foreign insurance company making such a contract to keep an agent in this State on whom service could be made. This would be a full remedy for all that mischief, without requiring such companies to keep an agent here on whom any process for any purpose could be served. There could be no advantage ob- tained for the people of the State by providing means to give the courts of the State jurisdiction over causes of action that accrued out of the State, in favor of persons not citizens of the State, against a corporation existing out of the State ; and it is not to be presumed that the legislature intended to accomplish that pur- pose unless that is the necessary result of the enactment. It is more reasonable to suppose that the intention was to provide a method for obtaining jurisdiction over a defendant to a cause of action the courts had jurisdiction of before, than that it was to provide means for obtaining jurisdiction of a cause of action where none was had before, and of the parties also by the compulsory appointment of an agent; and he referred to Smith v. Ins. Co., 14 Allen, 336, and Camden Rolling Mill Co. v. Swede Iron Co., 3 Vr. 15. On the other hand there are several more recent cases in which a different view is taken, and the statutes are construed as giving jurisdiction in suits brought by non-residents and over causes of action transitory in their nature arising outside of the territory. In a case in Massachusetts in 1882,^ a resident of Delaware brought suit against an insurance company organized in New Jersey and having an office in Boston, on a policy issued in Penn- sylvania on property in Delaware, and summons was served on the insurance commissioner in Boston in pursuance of the statute. (Gen. Stats. 1878, ch. 36.) This decision was approved and fol- lowed in a recent case in the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.^ This was a case of garnishment proceedings, and it was held that the jurisdiction to attach a debt did not depend upon the question of the situs of the debt, but upon the control obtained over the debtor by means of process duly served, and that such service might be made upon the agent of a foreign corporation appointed under the statute, even though the debt arose out of a contract made and to be performed in another State. ^ Johnson v. Trade Ins. Co., 132 Mass. 432. 2 Mooney v. Buford & George Mfg. Co., 72 Fed. Rep. 32 ; 34 U. S. App. 581.