Case ID: mass_4/html/0077-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      By the Court.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Jacob Barker versus John Tabor and Al. and Trustees
    It is a reprehensible practice to insert the name of a fictitious trustee in a foreign attachment, in order to give to the Court in one county a jurisdiction of the suit, the defendant and the other trustees living in another county.
    The question whether trustee or not depends solely on the sworn answers of the persons summoned to the interrogatories: and the Court will not receive a statement of facts agreed to by the plaintiff, defendant, and trustees.
    When this cause was broken to the Court, it appeared that a fictitious trustee had been inserted in the process, in order to give jurisdiction to the Court of Common Pleas in this county, all the other trustees, as well as the principal defendants, being inhabitants of the county of Cumberland. The Court expressed a strong disapprobation of such a practice, and intimated a disposition to animadvert more severely, in case another instance of it should occur.
    The parties, viz., the plaintiff, defendant, and supposed trustees, had agreed upon a statement of facts, upon which they submitted to the opinion of the Court, whether the persons summoned as trustees should be adjudged trustees or discharged.
    
      B. Whitman for the plaintiff.
    
      C. Jackson for the trustees.
   By the Court.

The question whether trustee or not can only be determined upon the sworn answers of the persons summoned to the interrogatories. The rights of others, not parties to this suit, are involved in the question. A practice of this sort may lead to collusion and fraud. We cannot receive the statement of facts, bul from the trustees under oath, 
      
      
         [Vide Stackpole vs. Newman and Trustee, post, 85, and note. — Fd.]