Case ID: mass_2/html/0042-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      The Court,\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The President, Directors, and Company, of the Union Turnpike Road versus Thomas Jenkins, and The New England Marine Insurance Company, his Trustees.
    An aggregate corporation cannot be summoned as trustee under statute of February 28,1795.
    This was an action of assumpsit, in which the plaintiffs set forth their charter of incorporation from the state of New York; sundry assessments made, in pursuance of the charter, upon the stockholders, of which the defendant was one; and his undertaking and promise to pay the amount of those assessments. The New England Marine Insurance Company were summoned, as trustees of the defendant, by a service on Peleg Coffin, Esq., their then president.
    The defendant pleaded, to the jurisdiction of the court below, that the cause of action, if any, accrued at Hudson, within the jurisdiction of the state of New York; that, at the time when this suit was commenced, and long before, and ever since, the said T. J. was, and still is, a citizen of the state of New York, and resident therein, and has never, within three years before suing out the original writ, been an inhabitant of, or resident in, this commonwealth; that the corporation named as plaintiffs was created by the state of New York, and has existed there only, and that all the members * 38 ] thereof were, and still are, * citizens of, and resident in, the state of New York, and did never live within this commonwealth ; that he, the said T. J., had no estate, goods, effects, or credits, within this commonwealth, liable to attachment; and that no estate, goods, effects, or credits, of his were attached by the original writ in this action.
    The plaintiffs reply that the New England Marine Insurance Com pony, a corporation erected within this commonwealth, had, and still have, in their hands, effects and credits of the said T. J., to the amount of 5000 dollars, which were attached in this action, and traverse that he had not any such effects, &c., and that none such were attached, &c.
    The defendant rejoins, that the effects and credits so attached are the property of the said T. J. and one T. J., Jun., jointly; and that no part of them are the sole property ot the defendant.
    To which the plaintiffs demur, and the defendant joins in demurrer.
    The question made in this action was, whether the property attached in the hands of the N. E. Marine Insurance Company can be held to respond the judgment which the plaintiffs may obtain; or, in other words, whether a corporation aggregate may be summoned as trustee under the statute of this commonwealth, passed Feb. 28, 1795, entitled “ An Act to enable creditors to receive their just demands out of the goods, effects, and credits, of their debtors, when the same cannot be attached by the ordinary process of law.”
    
    
      For the plaintiffs, it was argued that the .great and leading object of this statute was to prevent debtors from concealing their effects, or putting them out of the reach of legal process ; that this object, so desirable, would be in a great measure defeated, if it was once settled that credits- in the hands of corporate bodies were safe from attachment; that, as the officers of every corporation of this kind have the sole management of their affairs, keep all their accounts, and are perfectly acquainted with all the facts respecting the debts and credits of those with whom the company transact business, the useful and salutary purposes of the statute would be fulfilled by admitting those officers to come in and make answer, upon their oaths, in behalf of the * company, to the [ * 39 ] interrogatories. That this has, in fact, been frequently practised without opposition; and two or three cases were named wherein it had been done.
    
      W. Sullivan for the plaintiffs.
    
      Dexter and Jackson for the defendants.
   The Court,

without hearing the defendants’ counsel, were unani-' mously of opinion that an aggregate corporation cannot be sum maned as trustee, and that effects and credits, in the hands of such a corporation, cannot be attached under the statute. 
      
      
         By the act of 1832, c. 164, corporations are made liable to the process of foreign attachment,