holding section 508.040 controls when corporation is sole defendant
How later courts described this case
- holding section 508.040 controls when corporation is sole defendant
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
WHITE, Judge,
dissenting.
This case turns on the question of whether “operates” in section 508.070 should be read to mean “operates at the time the cause of action accrued,” or “operates at the time suit is brought.” The principal opinion holds that *934 the time to measure the elements of venue is when suit is brought because the word “operates” is in present tense. This argument is circular, assuming its conclusion that present tense in the statute refers to the time suit is brought. This is far from clear.
The statute, first enacted in 1927, is a model of confused draftsmanship. Where all other venue statutes refer to venue as lying in counties, section 508.070 suggests that venue may lie in a county, in a “town or county,” or in a “judicial circuit,” as if these were three distinct choices. The statute is particularly sloppy in maintaining a consistent verb tense, the key factor in the principal opinion’s analysis. The statute refers to two apparently identical events in different verb tenses, mandating, in the present tense, that venue is proper where “the cause of action may arise,” and using the past tense to place venue where the “the cause of action accrued.” The only way to see “operates” as unambiguous is to impose a blanket rule of construction that venue is presumptively determined by reference to the time at which the suit is brought. The principal opinion does this by analogizing this case to State ex rel. DePaul Health Ctr. v. Mummert. 1 That case does not support such a broad rule. In DePaul, respondent refused to transfer venue despite the fact that, although venue was proper at the time the motion was ruled on, it was not proper at the time suit was filed. 2 Thus, DePaul stands for no more than the unremarkable proposition that, if venue properly lies when a suit is filed, subsequent events do not make venue improper. In any case, given this Court’s repeated holdings that venue is entirely a statutory determination, I find broad rules of judicial construction inappropriate to analyze these cases. Instead I would look to the statute itself, and the policy embodied therein, to resolve ambiguities on its face.
The purpose of this special venue statute is, as the principal opinion recognizes, to “widen[ ] the field of venue in suits against motor carriers.” This goal is consistent with the broader aims of chapter 390, to which section 508.070 is explicitly linked. The right to operate as a contract carrier in any county in Missouri is a privilege for which specific permission must be obtained from regulatory authorities. 3 One price exacted for that privilege is that a carrier becomes liable to be haled into court in any county through which it operates. It appears that the legislature regards motor carriers as particularly hazardous operations, and has subjected to them to extensive regulatory burdens and expanded the fora in which they may be sued. That legislative judgment is ill-served by a judicially created rule of construction allowing motor carriers to restrict a plaintiffs choice of venue—after a cause of action has accrued—merely by ceasing to operate in a county until suit is filed.
The principal opinion disserves another important statutory goal by effectively holding that a dissolved corporation may only be subject to suit in the county where a cause of action accrued. By reading the corporate venue statute narrowly, the principal opinion treats a dissolved corporation far differently from one with continuing operations. This contravenes the legislative policy announced in section 351.476.2(5), which allows corporations to be sued just like existing entities even after they are dissolved. Absent a specific legislative pronouncement specifying different venue treatment for dissolved corporations relative to ongoing ones, I would hold that, as long as corporations may be sued in the corporate name, the proper venue for such a suit is any place where the corporation was subject to suit at the time of dissolution.
In short, the principal opinion supplies a meaning to section 508.070 that is not readily apparent on the face of the statute. Because the statute is ambiguous, I would construe it in such a way as to fulfill the manifest legislative intent. Accordingly, I would quash the alternative writ and allow suit to proceed in St. Louis City.
. 870 S.W.2d 820 (Mo. banc 1994).
. Id. at 823
. Section 390.061, RSMo 1994.