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Saudi Basic Industries Corp. v. Mobil Yanbu Petrochemical Co.1/14/2005
te in such manner that by reasonable diligence, such person may be served with process. If, after a cause of action shall have accrued against any person, such person departs from and resides or remains out of the State, the time of such person's absence until such person shall have returned into the State in the manner provided in this section, shall not be taken as any part of the time limited for the commencement of the action.
It is settled law that the purpose and effect of Section 8117 is to toll the statute of limitations as to defendants who, at the time the cause of action accrues, are outside the state and are not otherwise subject to service of process in the state. In those circumstances, the statute of limitations is tolled until the defendant becomes amenable to service of process.
Here, SABIC was "out of the state" and service of process upon SABIC could not have been accomplished in Delaware. Because SABIC lacked significant contacts with Delaware before it filed this lawsuit, the Delaware courts would have lacked personal jurisdiction over SABIC. Therefore, ExxonMobil could not have obtained personal jurisdiction over SABIC in Delaware. Only by voluntarily initiating this action in Delaware as plaintiff did SABIC "come[ ] into the State" and thereby become amenable to service of process. Thus, even if the three-year Delaware statute of limitations were found applicable to ExxonMobil's claims, the running of that statute was tolled until the date that SABIC filed its Superior Court action.
We conclude, for these reasons, that the Superior Court did not err by rejecting SABIC's defense (and claim-in-chief) that ExxonMobil's counterclaims are barred by the statute of limitations.
(2) THE EVIDENTIARY RULINGS
We turn next to SABIC's claim that the trial judge made four erroneous evidentiary rulings. We review rulings on the admission of evidence for abuse of discretion. Where a court "has not exceeded the bounds of reason in view of the circumstances and has not so ignored recognized rules of law or practice so as to produce injustice, its legal discretion has not been abused."
We conclude that none of the contested evidentiary rulings constituted an abuse of discretion.
(a) The first contested trial court ruling, is the exclusion of SABIC's proffered testimony of Ibrahim Bin Salamah, the SABIC official who negotiated the joint venture agreements. The proffered testimony was that Mr. Bin Salamah had personally told his counterparts at Exxon and Mobil that SABIC would receive a margin or "mark-up" on the Unipol(r) PE technology. That testimony, if allowed, would have contradicted the testimony of SABIC's Rule 30(b)(6) representative, Dr. Richard Pai, whom ExxonMobil had deposed three times. On each of those occasions Dr. Pai testified that SABIC always intended to charge the joint ventures a margin on the Unipol(r) PE technology, but had never informed Exxon, Mobil, Kemya or Yanpet of its intent. The proposed new testimony would also have directly contradicted Ben Salamah's previous deposition testimony-given only days before trial-that SABIC "never talk about the margin;" as well as SABIC's October 4, 2002 interrogatory responses, filed shortly before the trial, that expressly adopted Dr. Pai's testimony. Lastly, the proffered new testimony would have contradicted SABIC's responses to ExxonMobil's requests for admissions, in which SABIC represented that it had "no information that shows, one way or the other" whether SABIC had disclosed the royalty mark-ups to the joint ventures or to ExxonMobil.
Granting ExxonMobil's motion in limine, the trial court prohibited Mr. Bin Salamah from giving his proffe
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