Bliss v. Parks
| Citation | 175 Mass. 539,56 N.E. 566 |
| Parties | BLISS et al. v. PARKS et al. |
| Decision Date | 06 March 1900 |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts |
H. C. Bliss, for plaintiffs.
J. R Dunbar and A. F. Lilley, for R. W. Parks.
Alfred Hemenway and Walter S. Pinkham, for F. E. Litchfield and others.
Arthur S. Kneil, for John R. Reed.
These are bills in equity inserted in writs of attachment sued out of this court on August 4, 1898. The plaintiffs are receivers of the Bay State Beneficiary Association, appointed by a decree of this court entered on November 19, 1897, in proceedings brought by the attorney general at the relation of the insurance commissioner. The power to prosecute in their own names suits to convert into cash the property and effects of the association which are in action is given to them by the decree appointing the receivers. Wilson v Welch, 157 Mass. 77, 80, 31 N.E. 712. The association was incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts on June 2 1881, for the purpose 'of rendering pecuniary aid to families of deceased members, or to their heirs or assigns.' From the time of its incorporation until proceedings were instituted against it by the attorney general, the association transacted a benefit insurance business; issuing benefit certificates, and receiving from certificate holders money for admission fees, annual dues, and mortuary assessments. Annexed to the bills are copies of the certificate of incorporation, of the original by-laws of June 2, 1881, and of the by-laws as amended on January 13, 1892. Speaking generally, the contention of the receivers is that the defendants were officers and agents of the association, intrusted with its property and managing its business, and that in the discharge of this trust they have applied the money of the association to their own private use. In a sense, the bills are alike; each recounting in the same language the course of the association from the time of its incorporation, and alleging in the same terms a series of acts of officers and agents covering that period. The chief difference between the bills is that the first alleges that the defendants in the first suit were charged with the management during the period from June 2, 1881, to January 20, 1893, while the second alleges that the defendants in that suit were charged with the management from January 20, 1893, to September 12, 1896, and the third charges that the defendants in the third suit had the management from September 12, 1896, to the time of the receivership in November, 1898. There are four defendants in the first suit, each of whom was a person named in the certificate of incorporation as one of the persons who had associated themselves to form the corporation, and each of these defendants has filed a separate answer containing a demurrer. In the second suit there are ten defendants, one of whom is a defendant in the first suit. Five of these defendants have filed separate answers, each containing a demurrer. In the third suit there are six defendants, two of whom are defendants in the first suit, and one of these is also a defendant in the second suit. Four of these six defendants have filed separate answers, each containing a demurrer. Each of these 13 demurrers asserts that the bill to which it is directed is multifarious, and that it has no equity; and some of the demurrers also assert that the bill is argumentative, and also that it seeks a discovery of matters which are within the plaintiffs' own knowledge. Each suit is reserved for the determination of the full court upon the amended bill in that case and the demurrers thereto.
1. All the demurrers take the ground that the bills are multifarious, and 'brought for distinct matters and causes, which do not affect all the defendants alike, and which are not so related to each other as to be properly joined in the same petition or bill of complaint.' Each bill alleges that during a certain period the defendants named in that bill, as officers and agents of the association, were charged as trustees with the management of its business and the custody of its funds, and that in the performance of their trust they have not acted in good faith, but have conducted the business for their own personal benefit or gain, and have not kept safely and accounted for the money and property of the corporation, but have diverted it to their own use. In the light of this statement, which is the general ground of relief alleged, the different matters charged in each bill are not distinct, but are logically related to each other and to the cause of complaint. Each of them is relevant, either as proper matter of inducement tending to give character to other acts charged, or as being breaches of trust committed, during the period charged, by the defendants in that bill, or as competent upon the question of the kind and amount of relief to be awarded against the defendants named in the suit for the breaches of trust committed by them during the period charged in the bill. The defendants in each suit stood together, during the period specified in the bill in that suit, as the persons who then had the management of the business and the custody of the property of the association. It is not oppressive to make them co-defendants in a suit for equitable relief for breaches of this trust committed during their period of control. If there had been but one suit, covering the whole time from the beginning to the end of the business, and all of the defendants in the three suits had been joined in such a single action, some of them might have claimed, with more show of reason, that the bill embraced matters for which no relief could be given as against them, and with which they had no such connection as to make it just that they should be kept in court while those matters were determined as against other defendants. Upon that question we express no opinion. The plaintiffs have joined as co-defendants only those whom they allege to have been at the same time charged with the management, and to have misused it together. The objection that a bill is multifarious is one upon which there is no inflexible rule, and the question whether the objection shall be sustained must be determined largely by the circumstances of the particular case. See Robinson v. Guild, 12 Metc. (Mass.) 323, 328; White v. Curtis, 2 Gray, 467, 471; Shields v. Thomas, 18 How. 253, 15 L.Ed. 368; Enc. Pl. & Prac. p. 195 et seq. In the present case the plaintiffs seek to enforce a general right, with which the matters charged are connected, and to which the parties are so related that they cannot be said to be unduly burdened by being required to defend. There is no contention that the case is so complicated as to prevent the court from undertaking in it to administer justice between the parties.
2. The next ground taken by all the demurrers is for want of equity. This ground is stated generally, and must be overruled if the...
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