Dever Pickens v. Susan Dent Roy

• Decision Date: 01 December 1902
• Docket Number: No. 78,78
• Citation: 47 L.Ed. 128,23 S.Ct. 78,187 U.S. 177
• Parties: DEVER PICKENS, Appt. , v. SUSAN C. DENT ROY et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

187 U.S. 177

23 S.Ct. 78

47 L.Ed. 128

DEVER PICKENS, Appt.,

v SUSAN C. DENT ROY et al.

No. 78.

Submitted November 10, 1902.

Decided December 1, 1902.

Mr. John W. Davis and Messrs. Davis & Davis for appellant.

Messrs. Edwin Maxwell and J. Hop Woods for appellees.

Mr. Chief Justice Fuller delivered the opinion of the court:

This is an appeal from a decree of the United States circuit court of appeals for the fourth circuit affirming the decree of the district court for the district of West Virginia dissolving an injunction and dismissing a bill filed in that court by Dever Pickens against Susan C. Dent and others. 45 C. C. A. 522, 106 Fed. 653.

The facts necessary to be considered in disposing of the case were stated by the circuit court of appeals in substance as follows: January 24, 1889, Susan C. Dent exhibited her bill in the circuit court of Barbour county, West Virginia, against Dever Pickens and others, to set aside as fraudulent a certain deed made by Pickens to trustees, bearing date January 14, 1889, and assailing as fraudulent certain indebtedness thereby secured. At the succeeding September rules an amended bill was filed alleging that complainant Dent on July 23, 1889, recovered a judgment at law against Pickens for the sum of $10,000, with interest and costs. Complainant prayed that the real estate mentioned in the bill as the property of Pickens, and described in the trust deed, might be sold, and the proceeds applied to the payment of her judgment and in satisfaction of the liens existing on the land. The judgment was subsequently reversed, and a retrial resulted on February 27, 1892, in a judgment for $9,000, with interest and costs, and a second amended bill was filed so alleging.

The circuit court of appeals did not deem it essential to give a history of the many years of 'hard-fought and well-contested litigation,' which followed, but stated that the case was pending and undisposed of by the circuit court of Barbour county, October 30, 1899, when Pickens was adjudicated a bankrupt by the district court of the United States for the district of West Virginia on a petition filed October 27. After the adjudication, and on November 2, 1899, Pickens filed an answer in the chancery cause, in which he set up the proceed- ings in bankruptcy, asked that all further action in the state court might be suspended until the district court had disposed of those proceedings, and contended that all his estate, rights, and interests of every kind and description had passed from the control of the circuit court of Barbour county and into the jurisdiction of the district court. On November 18, 1899, a trustee in bankruptcy was appointed for Pickens's estate, who in February, 1900, presented to the circuit court of Barbour county his petition in the chancery cause, asking that he be made a party, that his petition stand as an answer, and that the circuit court proceed to the enforcement of the liens against the bankrupt's estate; and, thereafter, on February 23, 1900, that court rendered a decree by which, among other things, it was ordered that the deed of trust referred to in the bill be set aside as fraudulent, and that a special commissioner and receiver therein named should rent the land described until a certain day then sell the same, the proceeds thereof to be...