Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/41

21 JURISDICTION OVER FOREIGN CORPORATIONS. 21 The court said that it was notice to the debtor which gave the plaintiff in garnishment a lien upon the debt, and that if in the ordinary case of a foreign attachment a valid judgment could be rendered against a resident debtor, there was no reason why such a judgment should not be rendered against a foreign corporation which by law and its own consent had become subject to the ser- vice of process in the State where sued as if served with process there. The court referred to a recent case in New Jersey,^ in which the same conclusion was reached. In that case the able arguitient of Vice-Chancellor Pitney is directed against the doc- trine of the New York Court of Appeals in Douglass v. Insurance Co.^ with regard to the jurisdiction over the debt in cases of foreign attachment, and he holds that it is service of notice upon the debtor and not the situs of the debt that gives jurisdiction, and he asserts that for the purpose of such notice and for the service of process a corporation may have two domiciles. In a recent case in Mississippi,^ it was declared to be well settled in that State that an action might be maintained by a non-resi- dent against a foreign corporation for a tort arising outside of the State, and a demurrer to a plea to the jurisdiction in such a case was overruled. The decision was put upon the ground that the courts of the State were open to all suitors in all transitory actions against non-residents as well as residents, whether natural persons or artificial, provided only process were served or appearance were entered ; and the court said that the question in the case before it was settled by the fact that a statute provided that foreign corpo- rations should be liable to be sued or proceeded against by attach- ment or otherwise, as individual non-residents might be sued or proceeded against. The service in that case was made not upon an agent appointed to receive service of process, but upon the conductor of a railroad train, and the decision wholly ignores the question whether the corporation was in fact found within the State, or whether the conductor of a train could be held to represent the company with respect to an injury committed by another servant in another State. It is well settled in the Su- preme Court of the United States and by the great weight of authority that service can only be made upon such agents as may 1 Nat. Fire Ins. Co. v. Chambers, 53 N. J. Eq. 2 138 N. Y. 209. 3 Pullman Palace Car Co. v. Lawrence, Miss., May 24,^1897, 22 So, Rep. 53,