Court Opinion

ID: 9651257
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:11:27.140344+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:31.334789
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(specially concurring).
I agree with the result arrived at by the majority and with the reasons given for arriving at it. I disagree only with the statement in the opinion, which I regard as unnecessary to the decision, that the authority to appoint a receiver as “a complete demand and not merely ancillary to a demand for a money judgment against the corporation” given by Louisiana Statutes, Act of 1898, No. 159, may be exercised as well in a federal as in a state court. Pusey & Jones v. Hanssen, 261 U.S. 491, 43 S.Ct. 454, 67 L.Ed. 763, approved in Gordon v. Washington, 295 U.S. 30 at pages 37 and 38, 55 S.Ct. 584, 588, 79 L.Ed. 12821 and cited arguendo with approval in Kelleam v. Maryland Casualty Co., 312 U.S. 377 at page 381, 61 S.Ct. 595, 85 L.Ed. 899 and in Guaranty Trust Co. v. York, 326 U.S. 99 at page 106, 65 S.Ct. 1464, 89 L.Ed. 2079, 160 A.L.R. 1231, is authority to the contrary. It may be, in the present climate of opinion prevailing in the Supreme Court, that the doctrine, so clearly enunciated in Pusey & Jones v. Hanssen and so firmly reannounced in Gordon v. Washington and Kelleam v. Maryland Casualty Co., is on the way out. I think though this is neither the court nor the occasion to say so. This is not the court because we are without authority to overrule Supreme Court decisions, and whether, as diviners, we have read or misread the crystal bowl, we have had our labor for our pains. This is not the occasion, for, holding as we do that if the court had the authority to appoint, it did not err in not appointing a receiver, we have made it clear that our effort at divination is completely gratuitous.

 In this case Chief Justice Stone, speaking for a unanimous court, simply and clearly thus restated the reason for the appointment of federal equity receivers and the basis on which such appointment rests: “A receivership is only a moans to reach some legitimate end sought through the exercise of the power of a court of equity. It is not an end in itself. Where a final decree involving the disposition of property is appropriately asked, the court in its discretion may appoint a receiver to preserve and protect the property pending its final disposition. * * * it has never been extended to other classes of eases. Whenever the attempt thus to extend it, by using the receivership as an end instead of a means, has been brought to the attention of this Court, it has pointed out that a federal court of equity will not appoint a receiver where the appointment is not ancillary to some form of final relief which is appropriate for equity to give.”