Searls v. Greyhound Corporation

SHINN, P. J.

This is an appeal by Western Greyhound Lines, a Division of The Greyhound Corporation, from an order denying its motion for a change of venue from the Superior Court of the County of Los Angeles to the Superior Court of the City and County of San Francisco. The motion was made in an action wherein plaintiff sought recovery of damages for personal injuries allegedly sustained by him in a bus accident occurring near Tangent, Oregon. The grounds of the motion were that defendant “was at the time of the accident described in plaintiff’s complaint and at the time of the commencement of the within action, and now is, a Division of The Greyhound Corporation, a Delaware corporation, authorized to do and doing business in the State of

California;

and its principal place of business was and now is in the City and County of San Francisco, State of California, and that said corporation did not and does not now maintain a principal place of business in the County of Los Angeles, State of California ; and that the accident sued upon in said complaint did not occur in said County of Los Angeles. ...”

Article XII, section 16 of the California Constitution reads: “A corporation or association may be sued in the

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county where the contract is made or is to be performed, or where the obligation or liability arises, or the breach occurs; or in the county where the principal place of business of such corporation is situated, subject to the power of the court to change the place of trial as in other cases.” The constitutional provision relates to the place of trial, not merely to the place where an action may be commenced, and it applies to actions sounding in tort as well as to actions upon contract.

(Ray Wong

v.

Earle C. Anthony, Inc.,

199 Cal. 15 [247 P. 894].)

With respect to foreign corporations, chapter 3 of title I, division I, part XI of the Corporations Code sets forth requirements with which the corporation must comply in order to lawfully transact intrastate business. It is now settled that a foreign corporation which has complied with these provisions is entitled to a transfer of the place of trial of a transitory action to the county where its principal place of business is situated if the action was not commenced in one of the other counties specified in article XII, section 16 of the Constitution.