Court Opinion

ID: 8633611
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:41:34.206341+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:55:51.388910
License: Public Domain

GILES, District Judge.
The register in this case has certified into court the following questions: “Where the bankrupt’s property has been seized and sold under execution and distress for rent, leaving him nothing to claim under the fourteenth section, and the bankrupt having books with a large amount of debts due and owing to him, can the assignee allow any money to make good the property that would have been exempted had they not been sold?’’ This is a most important question, and one that will frequently arise in the future administration of the bankrupt law, and I hope that an exception may be taken to the action of the assignee, that I may be able to decide it in court, with the benefit of a full argument. It has never been decided by any of the courts, so far as I can learn, and is therefore a new question.
I do not consider that under the state law that money as such is exempt. It exempts property either real or personal, to be selected in the manner specified in the law; and only provides that where the property cannot be divided so as to set apart a portion of it of the value of one hundred dollars, the whole shall be sold, and the defendant shall receive one hundred dollars out of the proceeds.
Does the bankrupt act make any different provisions? I confess there is a strong equity, in that where the bankrupt possesses no personal property of the character exempted by the act, he should have an allowance made him out of his other assets; but I cannot find in the act any language which would warrant the allowance by the as-signee to the bankrupt, of money collected by such assignee from debts due the bankrupt. The only word to be found in the act that, if standing alone, might be construed to mean money, is the word “necessaries,” but in the connection where it occurs, I think it means provisions and other articles of family use, such as fuel, &c., for after it is used comes the provision “but altogether not to exceed in value the sum of five hundred dollars.” If. the register, when he speaks in his question of “books,” means the library of the bankrupt, this is exempted by the state law.
I do not consider that in this case any allowance in money can be made by the as-signee to the bankrupt, and the question is, therefore, answered in the negative.
[It was decided in this case that the attorney for the creditors is eligible to the office of as-signee (Case No. 8,150), and that, upon the allegation of fraudulent preference, the creditors were entitled to trial of issue by jury (Case No. 8,151).]