Court Opinion

ID: 9841677
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-22 20:01:22.220659+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:02:13.476652
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice DANIEL.
Whilst I concur in the decision of this court, in affirming the decree of the circuit court dismissing the bill of the appellants, in portions of the argument by which this court have come to their conclusion, I cannot concur. In expressing my dissent, I shall not follow the protracted argument throughout its entire length; my purpose is, chiefly, to free myself on any future occasion from the trammels of an assent, either expressed or implied, to what are deemed by me the untenable, and, in this case, the irrelevant positions, which,that argument propounds.
I readily .admit that the courts of chancery of the United States are vested with no prerogative power, cán exercise no power or function similar to those derived to the lord chancellor in England, either by commission under the sign-manual of the king, as parens patria, or in the application of the often-abused and oppressive doctrine of cy pres, or in virtue of the provisions of the statute of 43 Elizabeth. But this concession, taken in its broadest extent, by no means establishes the inference that the court of chancery in England, as a court of equity, by virtue of its inherent, and, if I may so speak, constitutional powers, apart from the prerogative and apart from the statute of Elizabeth, could not take jurisdiction of trusts, either iii the establishment or maintenance of those trusts, because they expressed or implied a charitable end or purpose, or because the charitable objects were not defined with perfect precision. And if such a powder inhered and existed constitutionally in the court of chancery in England as a court of equity., does it not follow, ex consequenti, that, the constitution and laws of the United States, constituting the courts of equity of the United States with express reference to the character and *397functions of the court of chancery as a court of equity in England, have conferred upon the former the regular inherent powers of the latter ?
Much of the learned and elaborate opinion of this court, delivered by the late Justice Story, in the case of Vidal et al. v. Girard’s Executors, 2 How. 127, nay, the great end and stress of that opinion, as correctly apprehended, consisted in the maintenance of the position that, apart from the prerogative power with which the lord chancellor was clothed, and independently of the statute of Elizabeth, and long anterior to the enactment of that statute, wherever there was a devise or bequest to a person, natural or artificial, capable of taking, and a beneficiary under the devise or bequest sufficiently certain and defined to be made the recipient of such a gift, the court of chancery, in the exercise of its regular and inherent jurisdiction, as a court of equity in relation to trusts, (one of the great heads of equity jurisdiction,) would establish and protect such devise or bequest, even in cases where the objects thereof were somewhat vague in their character, and although such devise contained a charity. To this express point, too, are the numerous decisions produced by the industry of the learned and able and distinguished counsel for the devisee, as the result of the researches made in the records of the chancery court, by a commission created under the authority of the British parliament. Indeed, the decision of this-court in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, would seem to be incomprehensible and without purpose^ unless interpreted as asserting and maintaining, both upon reason and authority, the regular jurisdiction of equity over devises, wherever the devisee was capable of taking, and the beneficiaries were sufficiently defined to render the directions of the testator practicable, although these directions declared or implied a charity.
It is somewhat curious to observe, that the opinion of Lord Redesdale, in the case of the Attorney-General v. The Mayor of Dublin, 1 Bligh, 312, is appealed to in support of the doctrine now promulged, when that same case is avouched and relied on in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, in support of the legitimate and regular powers of the courts of equity. This application of the language of Lord Redesdale would seem to grow out of the simple fact, that, in the case before him, the attorney-general was a party. But what is the declaration of his lordship, in reference to the powers of a court of equity over subjects like the one under his'consideration? After ■ denying that the statute of Elizabeth created any new law, and asserting that it only created a jurisdiction merely ancillary to that previously existing in the chancery court, he observes that *398the proceedings under that commission were still subject to appeal to the lord chancellor, and he might reverse or affirm what had been done, or make such order as he might think fit, reserving the controlling jurisdiction of the court of chancery as it existed before the statute. He then continues, as pointing out a different mode of effecting the same objects, and from a different source of power, to declare, that the same thing might be done by the attorney-general, by information, in virtue of the prerogative.
So, too, it is affirmed by this court, nemine contradicente, in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, that Lord Chancellor Sugden, in the case of the Incorporated Society v. Richards, 1 Drury and Warren, 258, upon a full.survey of all the authorities'where the point was directly before him, held the same doctrine as Lord Redesdale; and expressly decided that there was an inherent jurisdiction in equity in cases of charity, anterior to and independently of the-statute of Elizabeth.
Upon a just understanding of the opinion of the court in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors, and of the interpretation given, in that opinion, to the English authorities relied on, it seems impossible to escape from the conclusions, that devises to persons .capable of taking, in trust for beneficiaries sufficiently defined, and for purposes neither illegal nor immoral, and where there exist no objections to parties such as would exclude the jurisdiction of the court's in other cases, the courts of the United States as courts of equity, in the exercise of regular, inherent, equity powers in relation to trusts, will sustain and enforce such devises. These conclusions seem to follow inevitably from the ruling of this court in the case of Vidal v. Girard’s Executors. Indeed, they seem to be comprised within the literal terms of that decision ; and the decision now made seems to me incomprehensible, unless understood as designed to overrule that case, and every authority from the English chancery cited and commented upon in its support. For such an assault upon the previous decision of this court, 'wielding a blow so trenchant and fatal at one great, and acknowledged head of equity jurisprudence, the head of trusts, my mind is not prepared.
There is a principle, and, in my opinion, the correet principle, on which the decision of this court may be placed, without the innovation which is objected to. It is that on which my concurrence in the decree of this- court is founded, and one, too, which steers entirely clear of what is by me deemed exceptionable. That principle is this: That, by the will of Frederick Kohne, the devisees in trust were clothed with a merely naked power, to be exercised by them as the special and exclu*399sive depositories of the testator’s .confidence, and that power to be dependent on conditions upon which, and on which alone, they should have authority to act. In the progress of events to which the devise was necessarily incident, the powers created and to be executed by the devisees intrust, have become impracticable and void. These depositories of the testator’s confidence are all dead. The conditions on which their powers were made dependent, never did occur, and can by no possi bility ever, occur. It follows, therefore, that, in conformity with the will, there is no person who can act, and no subject to be acted upon, and no beneficiaries of the contemplated action. My opinion, therefore, is, that the devise has lapsed, or, rather, that no right ever came into existence under it; that nothing was ever passed by it from the estate, which descends, of course, to the testator’s heirs.

Order.

This cause came on to be heard on the transcript of the record from the circuit court of the .United States for the eastern district of Pennsylvania, and was argued by counsel. ' On consideration whereof, it is now here ordered, adjudged, and decreed by this court, that the decree of the said circuit court in this cause be and the same is hereby affirmed, with costs.