Iliff v. American Fire Apparatus Co‪.‬

This suit was brought by a volunteer fireman who was injured in fighting a fire in Fairfax County, Virginia, when a portion of the equipment mounted on a fire truck which he was using blew out and struck him with great force and violence. The fire truck and the apparatus had been sold to the Fairfax Volunteer Fire Department by the American Fire Apparatus Company, a Michigan corporation, one of the defendants, and the charge is that it had been negligently and unsafely designed, manufactured, and installed by the American Fire Apparatus Company and the American Fire Pump Company, which is also a Michigan corporation. The present appeal does not go to the merits of the controversy but is taken from an order of the District Court dismissing the complaint on the ground that there was no proper service of process on the defendants. Service of process was made upon the defendants on May 14, 1959, under Title 8-60 of the Code of Virginia of 1950, 1957 Replacement Volume, by serving the resident agent of Glenn D. Culbert, Inc., a Maryland corporation, on the theory that Culbert was the agent of the defendant in Virginia, and also by serving the Clerk of the State Corporation Commission of Virginia, on the theory that the defendants were foreign corporations doing business in Virginia. Motion was made by the defendants to quash the service on the grounds that Culbert was not the agent of the defendants and that the defendants were not doing business in the state. The District Judge, after hearing the undisputed testimony summarized below, sustained these contentions and ordered that the service of process be quashed.