Case ID: conn_79/html/0603-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Baldwin, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Theodore R. Converse, Receiver, vs. The Ætna National Bank. Theodore R. Converse, Receiver, vs. The First National Bank of Suffield.
    First Judicial District, Hartford,
    March Term, 1907.
    Baldwin, C. J., Hamersley, Hall, Prentice and Case, Js.
    On remanding a cause whose merits have been determined by this court upon demurrer, it becomes the duty of the trial court to render judgment accordingly, if the pleadings remain unchanged.
    
      A judgment based in’ terms upon one only of several grounds of demurrer is not erroneous if any of the grounds set up is well taken.
    Argued March 6th
    decided March 15th, 1907.
    Actions brought to the Superior Court for Hartford County by a Minnesota receiver against a national banking association, as a shareholder in a Minnesota corporation, to collect an assessment made against the respective defendants and other shareholders in the latter by a Minnesota court, under the Minnesota statute imposing a double liability on shareholders of an insolvent corporation. A judgment was originally rendered in each case for the plaintiff, after overruling a demurrer to the complaint. On appeal this judgment was reversed (79 Conn. 163) and the cause remanded for further proceedings. The Superior Court thereupon sustained (Gager, J.') the demurrer on the third ground set up in it, and gave judgment for the respective defendants.
    
      No error in either case.
    
    
      William Waldo Hyde, with whom was Charles Welles Gross, for the appellant (plaintiff).
    
      Charles E. Searls and Gardiner Greene, for the appellee (defendant).
   Baldwin, C. J.

The demurrer to the complaint sets up four grounds of attack: (1) that the plaintiff, suing as a foreign receiver, has no locus standi in our courts; (2) that the Minnesota order of assessment was made in an action to which the defendant, being a nonresident, had not been made a party, and by a court having no jurisdiction over it; (3) that the statute of Minnesota under which the assessment was made was not enacted until after the defendant had become a shareholder in the Minnesota corporation, and was therefore as to the defendant inoperative and void, since it would, if operative against it, greatly increase its liability for the debts of the Minnesota corporation, beyond that existing when it acquired its shares therein, and would impair the obligation of its contract as a shareholder, and so violate Art. I, § 10, of the Constitution of the United States; and (4) that the complaint neither shows that the indebtedness of the insolvent corporation, on which was founded the judgment of the creditor on whose suit the receiver was appointed, was contracted, nor that the suit resulting in said judgment was brought, after the enactment of said statute.

This court, when the cause was previously before it (79 Conn. 168, 171, 176, 64 Atl. 341), determined that the statute of Minnesota, on which it is based, purported to enlarge substantially the contractual liabilities previously owed by the defendant, and to subject it to a burden which it had never assumed; that this defense was open'to it, notwithstanding any of the proceedings in Minnesota; and so that the demurrer to the complaint should have been sustained by the Superior Court. On remanding the cause, it therefore became the duty of that court (no change in the pleadings having been made) to entera judgment sustaining the demurrer. Clarke's Appeal, 70 Conn. 483, 40 Atl. Ill.

Such a judgment was accordingly rendered, and while in terms based simply on the third ground of demurrer, it is not erroneous if any one of the four grounds that are set up is well taken. British American Ins. Co. v. Wilson, 77 Conn. 559, 564, 60 Atl. 293. Any further examination of the first, second, and fourth grounds, however, is unnecessary, in the view which we have taken of the fundamental merits of the defense.

The judgment appealed from in the case of Converse, Receiver, v. The First National Bank of Suffield is governed by and conforms to the opinion of this court rendered in the companion case of Converse v. Ætna National Bank, 79 Conn. 163, 64 Atl. 341.

There is no error in either case.

In this opinion the other judges concurred.