Court Opinion

ID: 6991935
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-24 03:26:31.104774+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:09:38.688483
License: Public Domain

Gary, P. J. I concur in the result reached by the opinion of Mr. Justice Garnett, but for the reason that the principle of the case of Sercomb v. Catlin does not cover this case. That case, as well as those followed by it, is based upon no superior equity in the creditors represented or receiver appointed in the suit here, but upon the jealousy of the court against encroachment upon, or disregard of, its power, jurisdiction or authority. As was said by the Rhode Island court (13 R. I. 447), “We but echo the universal doctrine when we say that to the utmost limit of the jurisdiction and authority of this court, its orders shall neither be interfered with or disobeyed.” In the case here, no fund in which the bank ever had any interest, or which the receiver could ever touch, is involved. In attachment suits in Hew York, brought by the appellants against the bank, a corporation, stranger to this suit, gave undertakings to pay the appellants the judgments they might obtain; that those undertakings were given at the instance of the receiver; that by means of them he was enabled to bring the fund attached, here that probably he must indemnify that corporation, furnish no grounds upon which a court here may, by indirection, discharge obligations voluntarily entered into in Hew York with full knowledge of all the circumstances, without compulsion, and not in the performance of any legal duty. Among all the grounds stated in the treatises upon equity jurisprudence for the cancellation of contracts or agreements, there is no mention that for such a purpose, a bill founded upon the allegation that the complainant entered into the contract with the expectation that he would obtain the benefit of it, and not be bound by it, will lie. If the appellants had, pending the application for an injunction, prosecuted their suits to judgments and satisfaction out of the fund of the bank, they might, in following the logic of Sercomb v. Catlin, have been compelled to make restoration. Bispham Eq., Sec. 404. But that fund the receiver has got into his possession, and he has no equity to substitute the means by which he obtained it, with full knowledge of the binding, legal obligation thereby incurred, to the place occupied by the fund before he interfered.