Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 12.djvu/35

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HARVARD LAW REVIEW.
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JURISDICTION OVER FOREIGN CORPORATIONS. 1$ icile there, so far at least as to give jurisdiction over transactions arising out of that business. " The corporation," he said, " cannot have the benefit of its place of business here without yielding to the persons with whom it deals a corresponding advantage." In Newby v. Van Oppen and the Colt's Patent Fire Arms Co.,^ it was held by the Queen's Bench that an American corporation, carrying on business in England, and having a general business office there, may be sued in an English court in respect to a cause of action arising there. The court said there had been no prior case at law, but that at least the service of summons should not be set aside. This decision was followed and approved in the Court of Ap- peals in Haggin v. Comptoir D'Escompte,^ and it was held that a French corporation which carried on an important part of its business in London, and had a banking house there, with head officers in charge of it, must be regarded as resident in London and subject to be sued there. In that case the cause of action arose in England, but in an earlier case, before Vice-Chancellor Bacon,^ the suit was brought by a firm in Belgium against a bank organized in China for dam- ages relating to the custody of goods in Japan, and service of proc- ess on the officers in charge of the defendant's banking house in London was held to be good. The difference, however, between such a corporation and one that has an office in the State only for limited purposes is pointed out in a later case in the Chancery Division, where it was held that the service of process on an application for an injunction against an American Land Co., with an office in London, should be set aside.* In these English cases, however, as in many recent decisions in England, the question was not whether a judgment of general obligation could be obtained, but whether the proceedings were authorized by the rules of court having the force of acts of Parliament.^ 1 L. R. 7 Q. B. 293. a 23 Q. B. Div. 519. « Lhoneux, Limon, & Co. v. Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Co., 33 Ch. Div. 446.

  • Badcock v. Cumberland Gap Park Co., 1893, i Ch. Div. 362.

6 The judgment of Lord Westbury in Cooking v. Anderson, i D. J. & S. 365, was overruled in Drummond v. Drummond, L. R. 2 Ch. App. 32, and Lindley, J. said, the question was not what jurisdiction the legislature ought to assume, but whether the legislature of this country has, in fact, authorized process to be served