Moore MacHinery Co. v. Stewart-Warner Corporation

Plaintiff, a resident of California, brought suit in the state court, and defendant removed to this court on the ground of diversity of citizenship. The action arose out of disputes over transactions occurring while plaintiff was acting under contracts as defendant’s “distributor” in portions of California, Nevada, and 'Arizona.

Defendant appeared here specially and moved to quash service of summons on the ground that defendant is a Virginia corporation with its principal place of business in Chicago, Illinois; that it maintains no office and transacts no business in California; that plaintiff attempted to serve defendant by serving the Secretary of State in accordance with § 406a of the Civil Code of California; that said attempted service is void because at the date of filing the complaint defendant was not doing business in the state of California, nor had it at any time transacted intrastate business in the state as defined in § 405 of the Civil Code of California. This is the sole question for decision under the facts, as shown by the contracts directly involved and affidavits of the parties.

The determination of this question “is often a matter of great difficulty and…