United States Supreme Court Cases & Opinions

U.S. Supreme Court

Eli Lilly & Co. v. Sav-on-Drugs, Inc., 366 U.S. 276 (1961)

Eli Lilly & Co. v. Sav-on-Drugs, Inc.

No. 203

Argued March 20-21, 1961

Decided May 22, 1961

366 U.S. 276

Syllabus

Appellant, an Indiana corporation, maintains an office in New Jersey on premises leased in the name of its district manager and occupied by him and a secretary, with appellant's name on the door and in the lobby and with the telephone listed in appellant's name. Appellant also has 18 other salaried employees traveling throughout the State and promoting the sale of its pharmaceutical products not to wholesalers, who buy them interstate, but to hospitals, physicians and retail drugstores, who buy them intrastate from wholesalers and sell them intrastate to consumers.

Held: on the record in this case, appellant is doing business intrastate in New Jersey, and a state statute requiring it to obtain a certificate of authority to do business there, as a condition precedent to maintaining in a state court a suit not based on a particular interstate sale, does not violate the Commerce Clause of the Federal Constitution. Pp. 366 U. S. 276-284.

31 N.J. 591, 158 A.2d 528, affirmed.