WEST STUART ACREAGE, INC., A FLORIDA CORPORATION, APPELLANT,
v.
JOHN L. HANNETT AND JON H. BERKEY, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS CO-TRUSTEES, ROBERT A. RINEHART, JOINTLY AND SEVERALLY, APPELLEES
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The court affirmed an order granting immediate possession of an automobile to the beneficiary, finding that the beneficiary was entitled to legal title of the vehicle.
The court affirmed the trial court's order granting immediate possession of the automobile to the beneficiary, Mrs. Hanson.
During trust proceedings, a co-trustee purchased a Mercedes automobile from marital trust funds and titled it in his individual name, giving possessio…
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HERSEY, Judge.
In this foreclosure action against appellant corporation and against its president in his'individual capacity, process was served on the corporation but not on the individual defendant.
Appealed is an order requiring the individual defendant to present himself for the taking of his deposition within fifteen days. The consequences of failure to appear are that the pleadings filed by the corporate defendant will be stricken and a default judgment entered against it.
The order is plainly wrong. Neither the officers, directors, shareholders or employees of a corporation are parties to an action against the corporation. It is the corporation, not the court or the opposing party, who decides what agents shall appear and speak for the corporation in litigation. To be sure discovery may be had of a particular officer, director, shareholder or employee of a corporation by service of process upon the individual like any other witness. Ohio Realty Investment Co. v. Lawyers Title Insurance Corp., 244 So. 2d 176 (Fla. 4th DCA 1971). Here the individual has never been served with process, either as a separate party or as a witness.
The difficulty is that the order appealed is not one of those non-final orders from which appeal is permitted under the Florida Rules of Appellate Procedure. We therefore treat the matter as a petition for writ of certiorari. Because any harm in the form of default may be adequately redressed on plenary appeal, we deny the petition.
PETITION DENIED; APPEAL DISMISSED.
DELL and WALDEN, JJ., concur.
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Citator
Cited By
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THE Florida BAR v. Schramek, 616 So. 2d 979 (Fla. 1993)…entities involved as respondents had appointed him as their agent to act in their behalf and that he was entitled to do so under the authority of section 607.011, Florida Statutes,3 as construed by this Court in West Stuart Acreage, Inc. v. Hannett, 427 So. 2d 323 (Fla.1983). Although we denied the Bar’s motions in Marina Securities, we did not do so on the grounds asserted by Schramek. Instead, we allowed Schramek to appear because the answer in that proceeding indicated that Schramek was personally and dir…
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Plantation-Simon Inc. v. Doured Al Bahloul, 596 So. 2d 1159 (Fla. 4th DCA 1992)…to hold that a party cannot name an officer, director or managing agent of an organizational party for a deposition and compel his attendance by simple notice. Our own research has also brought to our attention West Stuart Acreage Inc. v. Hannett, 427 So. 2d 323 (Fla. 4th DCA 1983), where we confronted a discovery order requiring a corporate president to attend his deposition. The president had been named individually in the foreclosure action as a co-defendant with his corporation, but he had not been serv…
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Nat'l Bev. Suppliers, Inc. v. Esquire Prods. OF Fla., Inc., 493 So. 2d 551 (Fla. 4th DCA 1986)…such instances, we not only grant certiorari, we also explain to the parties our reason for concluding as we have. E.g., Everglades Protective Syndicate, Inc. v. McKinney, 391 So. 2d 262 (Fla. 4th DCA 1980). In West Stuart Acreage, Inc. v. Hannett, 427 So. 2d 323 (Fla. 4th DCA 1983), the writer for the majority in the present case concurred in an opinion that contained an explanation of why the order sought to be appealed from was wrong; an explanation of why the attempted appeal had to be treated as a petit…
Authorities Cited
- Ohio Realty Inv. Co. v. Lawyers Title Ins. Corp. OF Richmond, 244 So. 2d 176 (Fla. 4th DCA 1971)