Roger Fandel et al., Appellants, v. Arabian American Oil Company, a Corporation, Appellee, 345 F.2d 87 (D.C. Cir. 1965)

Appellants, a husband and wife who reside in California, sued appellee, a Delaware corporation, in tort for injuries sustained by the husband in Saudi Arabia. In its answer appellee admitted its Delaware incorporation and that it had a place of business in New York City.¹  It moved to quash service of process upon it in the District of Columbia. The District Court granted the motion and dismissed the action for lack of jurisdiction over the person of appellee, on the ground that it was not "doing business" in the District within the meaning of either Section 334 of Title 13 of the D.C. Code, or Section 1391(c) of Title 28 of the U.S.Code.²  We affirm.

* The facts appear from the pleadings, an affidavit filed by a vice-president of appellee in charge of its Washington office, and a deposition taken by appellants of his assistant. Appellee has maintained for several years a six-room office in a downtown Washington office building, occupied by five people, two of whom are secretarial employees. It was upon one of the latter that service of process was made. The payroll for this office is $10,000 per month, and appellee is listed in the telephone book. Appellee's business is that of producing, refining, and selling oil and gas, all of which are done in Saudi Arabia. All deliveries by appellee are made in Saudi Arabia, with the exception of some crude oil that is delivered at a pipeline terminus in the Republic of Lebanon. None of such business is solicited, by advertising or otherwise, in the District of Columbia, and no contracts with respect to it are made there.

What appellee does do in the District is to maintain continuing relationships with the State Department and other executive agencies of the United States Government, with diplomatic missions accredited to that Government, and with educational and international organizations, private and public, interested in, or informed about, the Middle East generally and Saudi Arabia in particular. Information about appellee and its operations and experience in Saudi Arabia is made available to these entities, and information received from them is reported to the executive staff directing business operations in Saudi Arabia. Military personnel going to the Middle East are, upon their request, briefed by appellee on the social and political conditions they may expect to encounter. There are occasional contacts between appellee's people and the Washington representatives of other American oil companies who transact business with appellee in the Middle East, but the record before us shows these to be essentially social in nature.³ 

II

From the standpoint of the contribution made to the advancement of the business operations of an enterprise like appellee, a plausible claim can be made that its "state department" is as important as its "sales" or "accounting" or "production" departments. And, even on the relatively meagre record before us, it appears that the Washington office of appellee is, if not the sole, at least a significant element in its diplomatic and intelligence apparatus. But that element is centered in Washington simply because of what Washington is, namely the capital city where public and private persons, with interests or responsibilities in the Middle East, foregather and make their contribution, real or fancied, to the formulation of official policies.

This is not quite like the company whose agents in Washington are seeking contracts, either with our own Government or with other governments represented in Washington. See Mutual Int'l Export Co. v. Napco Indus. Inc., 114 U.S. App.D.C. 392, 316 F.2d 393 (1963). Appellee's presence in Washington, in terms of the carrying on its business of producing and selling oil, is different in kind, if perhaps not in degree insofar as its purely physical manifestations are concerned. In any event, it is a presence of a kind we think this court has heretofore regarded as falling outside the range of Congressional contemplation of the scope of "doing business" as that phrase is used in 13 D.C.Code § 334.⁴  See Traher v. De Havilland Aircraft of Canada, Ltd., 111 U.S.App.D.C. 33, 294 F.2d 229 (1961), cert. denied, 368 U.S. 954, 82 S. Ct. 397, 7 L. Ed. 2d 387 (1962); Fehlhaber Pile Co. v. Tennessee Valley Authority, 81 U.S.App.D.C. 124, 155 F.2d 864 (1946); Mueller Brass Co. v. Alexander Milburn Co., 80 U.S.App.D.C. 274, 152 F.2d 142 (1945); Layne v. Tribune Co., 63 App.D.C. 213, 71 F.2d 223, cert. denied, 293 U.S. 572, 55 S. Ct. 83, 79 L. Ed. 670 (1934); Neely v. Philadelphia Inquirer Co., 61 App.D.C. 334, 62 F.2d 873 (1932). These cases, although embodying variously different factual circumstances, seem to us to constitute a recognition that Washington presents many business organizations with special needs for a continuous and ponderable physical presence there, which needs are not those customarily associated with strictly commercial operations; and that the purpose of Congress was not to make that presence in every case a base for the assertion of personal jurisdiction.

We are construing what a statute does, and not determining what the furthest reach of legislative power could be consistent with constitutional limitations. See International Shoe Co. v. State of Washington, 326 U.S. 310, 66 S. Ct. 154, 90 L. Ed. 95 (1945). We do not think that the presence of appellee in the District, for the purposes and to the degree shown by this record, was conceived of by Congress as exposing it to suit here by Californians in respect of personal injuries sustained in an accident in Saudi Arabi.

Affirmed.