Citations
- 167 S.W. 808
Full opinion text
PHILLIPS, J.
The relator, Pierce Oil Corporation, is a Virginia corporation, chartered on June $21, 1913. It has heretofore made application in due form to the Secretary of State for a permit to do business in the state, tendering in that connection the anti-trust affidavit required by law, and all lawful fees. Upon his refusal to issue the permit it has filed this motion for leave to file its petition for mandamus to compel its issuance. On June 1, 1907, in a suit by the state in the district court of Travis county, the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, a foreign corporation chartered in Missouri, was by final judgment convicted of violation of the anti-trust laws of this state, for which a large fine was imposed, its permit to do business canceled, and an injunction issued perpetually enjoining it from transacting any but interstate business within the state. The relator was incorporated with the purpose of acquiring the property and business of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, then conducting its business in Missouri, in other states and in the republic of Mexico; and shortly after its incorporation it purchased and took over from the Waters-Pierce Oil Company all of its property and business and assumed all of its obligations, which business it now owns and operates.
We do not find it necessary to determine whether the relator is but a corporate continuation of the Waters-Pierce Oil Company, and therefore subject to the injunction decreed against that company in the suit above referred to, one of the positions here advanced by the respondent as a ground for his refusal to issue the permit. The question is in our opinion plainly ruled by the statute (article 7805, R. S. 1911), which is as follows:
“When any foreign corporation has been convicted of a violation of any of the provisions of this chapter, and its right to do business in this state has been forfeited, as provided in article 7803, no other corporation to which the defaulting corporation may have transferred its properties and business, or which has assumed the payment of its obligations, shall be permitted to incorporate or do business in Texas.”
The Waters-Pierce Oil Company having been convicted of violation of th