Court Opinion

ID: 8630485
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-24 19:36:52.879261+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:55:45.118060
License: Public Domain

CADWALADER, District Judge.
The case before Judge Blatchford which has been cited, has no apparent applicability. There was no question of an existing lien of whose fruits the creditors, holding it, were to be deprived. Here the equity of the general body of the creditors might be to require the proceedings, against the land in question, to be for common benefit subject to the lien of the judgment creditor. But in asserting this equity, the general creditors must not frustrate the right of the judgment creditor to his lien. If there was any probability of a proceeding for common benefit at the suit, either of the future assignee or of a provisional assignee, to establish the title of the bankrupt’s general creditors to flie land subject to the judgment creditor’s lien, I might, under some circumstances, restrain him from selling, in the mean time, at a sacrifice under his execution. This would be a jurisdiction to exercise with great cau- . fion; and might, in some cases perhaps, be exercisable under a bill in equity in aid of the proceedings in bankruptcy rather than under these proceedings themselves. The case may stand over for further consideration. In the mean time, if reason be shown, I may appoint a receiver to act as provisional assignee until the complete qualification of an assignee under the provisions of the act of congress [of 1867 (14 Stat 522)]. Such an assignee could inform himself as to the true interests of the general body of creditors. If a mode can be suggested of promoting their interests, without other injury to the judgment creditor than mere delay until a decision upon the title of the bankrupt, an injunction might possibly be proper. But under what circumstances this might thus be proper, cannot be suggested beforehand.
The foregoing opinion having been filed, the judge added:
My last remarks are made only because I do not wish to preclude further argument if it should be desired. At present, I do not see how I can possibly interfere unless upon an offer on the part of the general creditors to make such payment of the judgment creditor’s demand as may substitute the as-signee in bankruptcy for him as to the lien of the judgment; nor how even this can be done after an actual sale by the sheriff, though the purchaser’s title may not have been consummated. 1 do not pause to consider whether' the bankrupt is the party who should have presented the petition if it were .otherwise a proper one. Perhaps before assignment, it may, under this act of congress, be necessary in some cases to allow him to make certain applications which, after assignment, would be more proper on the part of the assignee.
The matter was not afterwards moved.