Blundon v. Guy

• Decision Date: 09 November 1931
• Docket Number: No. 5172.,5172.
• Parties: BLUNDON et al. v. GUY et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — District of Columbia Circuit

53 F.2d 930 (1931)

BLUNDON et al. v. GUY et al.

No. 5172.

Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia.

Argued October 8, 1931.

Decided November 9, 1931.

W. C. Sullivan, of Washington, D. C., for appellants.

Arthur J. Hilland and Frederic B. Warder, both of Washington, D. C., for appellees.

Before MARTIN, Chief Justice, and ROBB, VAN ORSDEL, HITZ, and GRONER, Associate Justices.

GRONER, Associate Justice.

Appellants, who are real estate agents in the city of Washington, have since December, 1919, acted in that capacity for the owners of a certain building located in Washington city, the second and third floors of which were occupied by one Eva L. West as tenant. In September, 1927, one of the owners of an undivided interest in the property brought a partition suit in the Supreme Court of the District to have the property sold and the proceeds distributed. Trustees, who are appellees here, were appointed in that cause and directed to make sale of the property, and, about the middle of the year 1929, reported to the court they had made sale, and an order was passed directing them to receive the purchase price and to execute and deliver a deed to the purchaser.

During the pendency of the equity proceeding, Eva L. West, the tenant of the building, claiming to have sustained personal injury as a result of the falling on her of a part of the ceiling, commenced an action against appellants (presumably as agents of an undisclosed principal) in which she sought to recover damages for her injury while a tenant in the premises. Thereupon appellants filed a motion in the equity suit asking leave to intervene for the purpose of having the proceeds of the sale impounded in the registry of the court pending the final disposition of the law case, but this intervention the court below refused. Thereupon appellants brought an independent bill in equity against the trustees, in which they allege: "The owners of the said lands and premises are all nonresidents of the District of Columbia, and are all financially irresponsible," and further allege that, if the proceeds of the sale are distributed, they would be without remedy as to reimbursement of the amount of any judgment which they might be called upon to pay, and ask for an injunction against the distribution of the fund.

The court refused an injunction and dismissed the bill, and this action of the court is here on appeal.

The rule, we think, is elementary that a general creditor must obtain a judgment before he can have relief against his debtor in equity, and in Tate v. Liggat, 2 Leigh (Va.) 91, it was said that the rule is founded upon the principle of the common law that it is essential to the enjoyment and circulation of property, that every debtor, until his property is specifically bound to the satisfaction of his debt by his own agreement or by some judicial proceeding, has an absolute right to dispose of it at pleasure, to prefer one creditor to another, or even to waste or destroy it; a power which no tribunal has authority to control or limit; and in Shufeldt v. Boehm, 96 Ill. 560, it was said that the rule was founded upon the...