Dreher v. Fidelity & Casualty Co.

KAUFMAN, J. This is an appeal from an order granting respondents’ motion for a change of venue from the Superior Court of the City and County of San Francisco to the Superior Court in and for the County of Los Angeles.

Defendants and respondents A. B. Leekie and William Scott Brewster are private detectives licensed by the State of California. Appellant, Robert H. Dreher, a practicing attorney in Alameda County, California, instituted action against the above respondents and against respondents, the Fidelity and Casualty Company of New York, a corporation, and the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, a corporation by filing a complaint entitled “Complaint on Surety Bonds and in Tort.” The respondent detectives were charged with a slander committed against appellant in the course of an investigation made in the State of Arizona. The corporate defendants were sued as sureties on the bonds which they had furnished to the private detectives as required by sections 7546, 7545, 7547, and 7549 of the Business and Professions Code, which run in favor of any member of the public.

The individual respondents, both residents of Los Angeles County, filed their joint notice of and motion for a change of venue supported by affidavits. The corporate defendants and respondents both filed consent to the change of venue. Said motion was granted on October 24, 1955.

Appellant contends that the motion was erroneously granted since the corporate defendants both foreign corporations, had their principal place of business in this state in San Francisco. Section 16 of article XII of the Constitution of the State of California provides that “A corporation or association may be sued in the county where the contract is made or is to be performed, or where the obligation or liability arises, or where 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.” Section 395, Code of [697]Civil Procedure, provides that the county of residence of the defendants “or some of them” is the proper county of venue. It is admitted by all parties that the principal place of business of the corporate respondents is San Francisco, and that the residence of the individual respondents is Los Angeles.

Appellant admits that if the complaint is held to state two transitory causes of action against multiple defendants, some individual and some corporate, then the individual defendants, respondents herein, were properly granted their motion for change of venue. It is appellant’s position that the complaint states but a single cause of action. Where there is only one cause of action and different forms of relief are sought, the form of the action for the purpose of venue is determined by the “main relief” rule.