Case ID: ga_65/html/0691-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Jackson, Chief Justice.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Johnson, Administrator, vs. Flanders et al.
    
    A bill filed by an administrator against creditors of the estate, alleged, in brief, as follows : The intestate died in possession of both real and personal property. The administrator advertised some of the realty for sale, but claims were interposed and sustained. The balance, the title to which is in litigation, has been set apart as a homestead to the family. The administrator has sold the perishable property, and collected some of the accounts due the estate ; some othe; s can be collected, and some cannot. A year’s support has been allowed the family. Supposing the estate solvent, he paid some debts, but it has turned out to be insolvent. There are numerous debts pressing against the estate and claiming priorities, and liens, some of which are very doubtful. One debt has been reduced to judgment, and the fi.fa. levied on the land in litigation, as above stated. Other suits and complications will follow. The object of the bill was to marshal the assets, to enjoin the creditors from proceeding against him, and to obtain direction as to the mode of payment and of administering the assets :
    
      Held, that there was equity in the bill, and it should not have been dismissed on demurrer.
    Equity. Administrators and executors. Before Judge JOHNSON. Johnson Superior Court. March Term, 1880.
    Johnson, administrator, filed his bill agains Flanders et al., alleging substantially the facts set out in the headnote. On demurrer the court dismissed the bill, and complainant excepted.
    E. O. Bostick; J. K. Hines, by Z. D. Harrison, for plaintiff in error.
    No appearance for defendants.
   Jackson, Chief Justice.

This bill was filed by the plaintiff in error to marshal the assets of an estate, and to enjoin the creditors thereof in the meantime from ruining the estate by a multiplicity of suits, and the enforcement of liens of various dignity. The estate is insolvent. There are claims cf physicians’ bills for services in last sickness from different doctors, and other liens of greater or less dignity. The immediate cause of its having been brought by the administrator seems to be that he had been sued and judgment rendered and execution levied on a tract of land, and the prayer ot the bill is to stay this creditor as well as others who have sued or are threatening to sue. On demurrer the court dismissed the bill, and therein we think that the court erred. To adjust the several claims of creditors, to avoid a multiplicity of suits, to marshal the assets of the insolvent estate, to protect the rights of all the creditors, and to save himself from serious embarrassments and imminent danger of loss to him and his sureties, it was the duty and the right of the administrator to file the bill and settle the estate in equity. Code, §3146 ; 9 Ga., 377; 14 Ib., 323 ; 45 Ib ; 205 ; 41 Ib., 630.

It will be observed that some debts may be of higher dignity than the judgments obtained in the lifetime of the intestate, and even as to those defendants the court may not have rightfully dismissed the bill; but in respect to the great body of the defendants it should have been retained beyond a doubt.

We do not think that the facts in the bill, which are true for the purposes of the demurrer, make such laches in the administrator as to deny him the right to this remedy. The answer cannot be invoked to aid defendant in this issue.

Judgment reversed.