Borough of Eatontown v. Hendrickson
| Decision Date | 13 November 1931 |
| Citation | 157 A. 118 |
| Parties | BOROUGH OF EATONTOWN v. HENDRICKSON. |
| Court | New Jersey Court of Chancery |
Syllabus by the Court.
Equity has jurisdiction to withdraw causes of complicated accounts from the law courts, but the exercise of the jurisdiction is always a delicate undertaking, depending upon the attending circumstances in each case.
Suit by the Borough of Eatontown against Edmund P. Hendrickson. On motion to dismiss the bill.
Bill dismissed.
See, also, 107 N. J. Law, 21, 150 A. 584.
McDermott, Enright & Carpenter, of Jersey City, for the motion.
Arthur T. Vanderbilt, of Newark, opposed.
BACKES, Vice Chancellor.
The motion is to strike the bill, which has for its object the withdrawing of a suit from the law courts on the ground that accounts in issue are too complicated for a jury trial to result in a just verdict.
The bill discloses that the complainant, the town of Eatontown, brought suit in the Supreme Court against Hendrickson, a former tax collector and his bondsman, to recover taxes collected by him during his term, 1921-26, and misappropriated. The cause was sent to a referee, under objection, who reported a defalcation of $29,125.10. A jury trial that followed resulted in a verdict for the defendant which the court set aside as against the weight of the evidence.
The referee's schedule of 265 pages of collections, after credits, shows the shortage. His findings as to items of charges rest, in part, on such of the collector's books as were not destroyed by a mysterious fire on the eve of his forced resignation and on taxpayers' receipts and vouchers of payments not disclosed by the books or the records of which were destroyed by the fire. The items are not in dispute. The exceptions to the report are addressed to alleged erroneous calculations, computations, and compilations of the referee which the Supreme Court held were but feebly supported at the trial. The exceptions having thus limited the proof at the trial, there is no longer a complication of the accounts of the parties. The jury question of complicated accounts has shifted to an investigation of the correctness of the referee's report upon a state of facts no longer in controversy and now largely a question of law to be settled by the court for the jury in submitting the disputes arising on the report. Reduced to that, the issues are not of such complications as to warrant the withdrawal of the trial from the law courts. Equity has jurisdiction to withdraw causes of...
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Ewing Tp. v. City Of Trenton.
...v. Chestnut Hill Land Co., 77 N.J.Eq. 23, 75 A. 644; Pine Building Co. v. Grossman, 102 N.J.Eq. 189, 140 A. 251; Eatontown v. Hendrickson, 109 N.J.Eq. 292, 157 A. 118; Burdick v. Grimshaw, 113 N.J.Eq. 591, 168 A. 186. Any interest the complainant Gerstnicker and those similarly situated hav......
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...relief. She does not sue to remove the cause from the law courts because of complications in the account, as in Borough of Eatontown v. Hendrickson, 109 N. J. Eq. 292, 157 A. 118, but to enforce her legal right to an accounting, the right of partners to an accounting, which may be had in eq......