Preston W. GRACE and Charlotte B. Grace, his wife, Plaintiffs, v. John D. MacARTHUR, Ronnie Smith, and Bankers Life & Casualty Co., Defendants, 170 F. Supp. 442

Summary

Plaintiffs sued for breach of contract. Defendants were an insurance company and two individuals, one a citizen of Illinois, the other a citizen of Tennessee. Service on one of the individual defendants was attempted under Ark. Stats. § 27-340, which authorized service on the Secretary of State for the State of Arkansas with respect to any non-resident person. Service on the other individual defendant was personally delivered to him while defendant was a passenger on an airplane in airspace over Arkansas. Both defendants filed a motion to quash. The court concluded that at the time the summons was served on defendant on the plane, the plane and its passengers were within the "territorial limits" of the State of Arkansas, as that term was used in Fed. R. Civ. P. 4(f). The court held that the other individual defendant's motion to quash should be reserved until trial.