Buck v. Piedmont & Arlington Life Ins. Co.
| Decision Date | 23 December 1880 |
| Parties | BUCK and others v. PIEDMONT & ARLINGTON LIFE INS. CO. and others. |
| Court | U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit |
Ould & Carrington and R.L. Maury, for complainants.
John O Steger, W. W. Crump, Hundley & Hunter, Sands, Carter & Leake Keen & Davis, and others for defendants.
HUGHES D.J.
The defendant in this cause, the Piedmont & Arlington Life Insurance Company, is avowedly insolvent, and, on the thirtieth day of November ultimo, its president vice-president, and secretary, by order of its board of directors, and without previous authority from its stockholders, made a deed of assignment, by which it granted, *******, and assigned to its vice-president, Angus R. Blakey, all its bond, bills, notes, choses in action, and evidences of debt of every description; all its judgments, decrees, and liens; its mortgages, deeds of trust, and securities; all its office furniture in Richmond, including desks, tables, carpets, stoves, iron safe, and other apparatus; and all its lands, lots, tenements, and parcels of real property lying in the states of Virginia, West Virginia, Tennessee, Court Carolina, Arkansas, Texas, and Florida,-- in trust for certain purposes set out in the trust deed, which describes in detail the lands conveyed.
The deed gives the trustee power to sell, dispose of, and convey the said effects for cash or on such credits as he may choose, and with the proceeds to pay, first, two classes of preferred creditors, one class prior to the other; and, afterwards, to secure to the policy-holders of the company, and beneficiaries under policies issued by it, the equitable value of their policies, as of the date of the deed, discriminating the policy-holders in the states of Kentucky, California, and Maryland from those in other states of the Union; and preferring those policy-holders who may be 'satisfied' with the equitable values ascertained by the trustee, over those who may be 'not satisfied.' By this deed the directors put the affairs of the company in liquidation, and, by necessary effect, terminated the existence of this corporation, as a life insurance company.
On the eleventh day of this month the complainants, who are non-residents, exhibited their bill in this court, in which they charge that the defendant company is insolvent; that its deed of the 30th ultimo is fraudulent, and was intended to hinder and delay creditors, and was made without authority of the stockholders; and, among other things, they pray for the appointment of a receiver, and for the setting aside of the trust deed as null and void. A rule was made by this court on the eleventh instant calling upon the defendant company and the said Blakey, trustee, to show cause here, on the twentieth instant, why a receiver should not be appointed.
The company and Blakey appeared on the twentieth instant, and, in the form of two pleas, denied the jurisdiction of this court to entertain this suit. One of the pleas set out, as defeating this jurisdiction, in substance, the fact that the said Blakey had on the third instant set on foot a suit in the chancery court of Richmond asking the aid of that court in administering his trust, involving the subject-matter of the suit here; but it has been shown that the bill of Blakey has not yet been filed in the said state court. The other plea to the jurisdiction of this court set out the fact, in substance, that one C. B. Maury had on the third instant set on foot a suit in the said chancery court of Richmond, and exhibited his bill there against the defendant company and Blakey, the trustee, for purposes similar to those sought by the proceeding in this court. It has been shown that in neither of the two suits in the chancery court of Richmond has the cause proceeded to issue; that those suits are still at rules; that that court has not appointed a receiver or taken custody of the res,-- that is to say, the effects of the defendant company,-- or made any order by which it took cognizance or assumed jurisdiction of the controversy between the parties to the respective suits; and...
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