Lawrence Warehouse Co. v. Defense Supplies Corp.

Motion of Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

The Reconstruction Finance Corporation, purportedly joined by the Defense Supplies Corporation, moves to amend the complaint and judgment herein by substituting the Reconstruction Finance Corporation as plaintiff and judgment creditor and to substitute it as appellee in this Court.

The admitted facts are that Defense Supplies Corporation ceased to exist on July 1, 1945, by virtue of the Act of Congress of Ju'ne 30, 1945, dissolving that corporation; that after it ceased to exist, the trial of the case in the District Court on which the subsequent judgment rests was continued by the filing on July 2, 1945, of a closing brief in the name of the defunct corporation; followed by the Court’s order of submission of the trial on July 16, 1945; thereafter, on April 15, 1946, the judgment was entered for the non-existent corporation against certain defendants and against it as to one defendant; that thereafter the defunct corporation purported to appeal, and the judgment debtors appealed to this Court; thereafter, on September 16, 1946, over a year after its dissolution, the defu'nct corporation filed here its points and authorities on its…

(dissenting).

The majority it seems to me have reached an unconscionable result on the basis of insubstantial and purely technical considerations. The statute does not justify, much less compel, the result. It has been arrived at by treating as an insuperable jurisdictional obstacle what ought, at most, be regarded as a procedural omission of no substantial prejudice to any party.

The pending controversy was initiated by motion of appellants Lawrence Warehouse Company and Capitol Chevrolet to vacate our affirmance of the judgment against them, Lawrence Warehouse Co. et al. v. Defense Supplies Corp., 9 Cir., 164 F.2d 773 , and to remand the cause to the district court with instructions to dismiss, the ground of their motion being that when the judgment was entered against them in the district court that court was without jurisdiction to render it. Since the merits of the motion can not intelligibly be considered unless one has in mind the sequence of events leading up to the entry of the judgment, I summarize these happenings in the order of their occurrence.

In February of 1944 Defense Supplies Corporation began this suit, which was for damages for the allegedly negligent…