Court Opinion

ID: 9651559
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 16:26:25.785153+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:12:35.756542
License: Public Domain

SIBLEY, Circuit Judge
(dissenting in part).
The District Court should, as the majority opinion holds, have permitted the appellant to prosecute, his remedy in the State court if it could itself afford him none. But I think he had a lien upon the fund which the District Court is about to distribute and that in consequence the District Court should have given him relief. The lien does not arise from appellant’s being an attorney at law, but rests upon the fact that he is a creditor of a trust estate which is charged with the payment of-his debt, he having no personal debt against anyone. The bondholders protective committee were trustees of the bonds and their proceeds. Bullard v. City of Cisco, 290 U.S. 179, 54 S.Ct. 177, 78 L.Ed. 254, 93 A.L.R. 141. By the deposit agreement creating the trust they were authorized to employ an attorney at law to do what appellant did, and pay him out of the bonds or their proceeds. He sought an exact understanding touching his pay and the Committee twice informed him in writing that his fees were a charge against the bonds. The testimony is uncontradict-ed that the Committee assumed no personal liability to him. The District Court itself has undertaken to convert the bonds and the mortgage securing them into an investment in the mortgaged property by allowing the trustee to buy it in at foreclosure sale and operate it. It has again by having the trustee sell the property converted the bond interests into cash, which it is now about to administer. Appellant ought to be paid whatever amount is due him out of that money. It is his only source of payment. Equity calls his right a lien. “Every express executory agreement in writing, whereby the contracting party sufficiently indicates an intention to make some particular property, real or personal, or fund, therein described or identified, a security for a debt * * * creates an equitable lien upon the property so indicated, which is enforceable against the property in the hands, not only of the original contractor, but of his heirs, * * and * * * incumbrancers with notice.” *297Walker v. Brown, 165 U.S. 654, 665, 17 S.Ct. 453, 457, 41 L.Ed. 865. The language was repeated and applied to sustain an attorney’s claim in Ingersoll v. Coram, 211 U.S. 335, 29 S.Ct. 92, 53 L.Ed. 208. It fits the present case. The District Court could and should have enquired into and enforced the lien against the fund in its hands for administration.