Case ID: scl_2/html/0109-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      The Court,", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Benjamin Waring against The Catawba Company.
    
      Charleston District,
    
    
      1797.
    
    A member of a corporation may maintain, an" action a-gninst snch corporate body for any just demand against it
    ASSUMPSIT for goods sold, and for work and la-bour, &c.
    Plea in abatement.
    This case came before the court upon a plea in abatement, which pleaded that plaintiff was himself a member of the company, and therefore could not maintain any action against it in his individual capacity.
    
      Mr. Trezevant, for the plaintiff,
    argued, that there was a wide difference between a copartnership in trade, anda cor* , r r i poration. Copartners, he admitted, must sue and be sued jointly; that they were jointly and severally liable, &c. But a corporation (as in the present case) must be sued in its corporate name ; that the private property of its members were not liable, only the corporate property ; so that there. was a wide difference between a corporation and a copart-nership, both as to the mode of bringing an action, and as to the effect of any judgment or decree against them.
    That by an act of the legislature, passed in the year 1792, corporate bodies are expressly authorized to recover and receive from their members all fines, forfeitures, and other debts, dues and demands, arising in any manner howsoever. Surely then, he argued, if corporate bodies have a right to! recover from their members, in their private capacities, any 1 debt or demand, such members, in like manner, must have/ an equal right to recover from such corporate body any debt or demand due or owing to any individual of that body ; or they might set off in discount any such demand against the corporation, in a suit against them, justice must be reciprocal in its nature, or it ceases to exist; for to say that one man, or body of men, shall have a power to pursue a right against another, and that other should not have a right to prosecute his claim or remedy in his turn against the body corporate, would be a perversion of principles.
    But, he said, he conceived that this point had been settled by a number of adjudications in our own courts, at different times. The Mount Zion Society, the Library Society, the City Council, all corporate bodies, had been in the habits of recovering moneys from their members, and members in their turn had recovered money from them. The cases of Bourdeaux and Stephen Drayton against 7 he Santee Canal Company were cases in point; in both which cases they were allowed to maintain actions, and to recover their salaries from the company, upon the foregoing principles, although they were both of them members.
    
      The Attorney-General, contra,
    said this company ought to be considered as an association for gain, or the emolument of its members, and therefore in law should only be considered as a kind of copartnership, and not as a public corporation. That the act of 1792 should be construed literally, and confined to its letter, in which case it would then be found to give a right only to a corporation to sue its own members, but that it gave no right to a member to sue the corporation, and it should not by any construction be carried further than it expressed.
   The Court,

after hearing the arguments, overruled the plea in abatement, as containing principles subversive of justice ; but they observed, that the two cases of Bourdeaux and Drayton against The Santee Canal Company, had settled this point, as they had both been allowed by this court to maintain their actions for their salaries, &c. against the company, as well as the cases respecting the other public societies, mentioned in the argument.

The plaintiff was then allowed to go on and prove his debt to a jury.

Present, Burke, Grimke and Bay ; but as Judge - Grimke was a member of the company, he declined giving an opinion.