Louis Elie Joseph Henry De Galard De Brassac De Bearn v. Safe Deposit Trust Company of Baltimore
| Decision Date | 06 April 1914 |
| Docket Number | No. 301,301 |
| Citation | 233 U.S. 24,58 L.Ed. 833,34 S.Ct. 584 |
| Parties | LOUIS ELIE JOSEPH HENRY DE GALARD DE BRASSAC DE BEARN, Count and Prince of Bearn and Chalais, Appt., v. SAFE DEPOSIT & TRUST COMPANY OF BALTIMORE, American Bonding Company of Baltimore, et al |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Maurice L eon and George C. Holt for appellant.
[Argument of Counsel from page 25 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Charles McH. Howard, Edward Duffy, and Albert C. Ritchie for appellees.
In this case the court below sustained a demurrer to the complaint, and this direct appeal was then taken on the theory that rights under the Constitution of the United States were involved. To determine whether there is a constitutional question, and, if so, to decide it, requires a statement of the averments of the complaint.
The complainant was the appellant and the defendants were the Safe Deposit & Trust Company of Baltimore, American Bonding Company of Baltimore, Alexander Brown & Sons, a commercial firm established in Baltimore, and Theodore P. Weis, sheriff of the city of Baltimore. It was alleged that the complainant was the owner of coupon bonds of $29,000 issued by the New York Central & Hudson River R. R., and of $156,000 of bonds issued by the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Omaha Railway Com- pany, a specified amount of the bonds being registered in the name of a minor son and a stated amount being likewise registered in the name of a minor daughter of the complainant. It was averred that the bonds were in a safe deposit box in the vault of the defendant Safe Deposit & Trust Company, 'where your orator, by means of a guardianship proceeding in the orphans' court of Baltimore, which has since been declared illegal and void, was induced to place said bonds, said box being rented and standing recorded on the books of the said Safe Deposit Company in the joint names of Messrs. Alexander Brown & Sons and the American Bonding Company; that for the purposes of such guardianship proceeding your orator had, in the year 1908, been required by the said American Bonding Company as surety on your orator's bond in said guardianship proceeding to agree not to remove the said bonds without the consent of said surety; and had further been required by said surety to consent that said surety and said Alexander Brown & Sons should only have joint access to said bonds and the same for the sole purpose of enabling said Alexander Brown & Sons to remove interest warrants from said bonds during the said guardianship, and forward the same for payment to the city of New York as they became due.
'That in December, 1909, the court of appeals of Maryland, by a decree founded upon personal jurisdiction over all the parties to said guardianship proceeding, declared the said guardianship and certain releases given by your orator in connection therewith null and void; that by said adjudication, the said suretyship of the said American Bonding Company of Baltimore was extinguished, and that neither said Bonding Company nor said Alexander Brown & Sons have, since said adjudication, had any right of access to or other right or control whatsoever in, over, or as to said safe deposit box and the contents of the same, and said adjudication has setablished the lack of jurisdiction over said property on the part of the courts which had so undertaken to deal therewith.
'That your orator is entitled to the immediate possession of the said evidences of debt, to wit, registered bonds, for all purposes, and is in urgent need of them for the purpose of causing said debts to be transferred upon the books of the debtor corporations in the state of New York to the name of your orator, or at his option, of surrendering said bonds to the said corporations respectively in exchange for the issuance to your orator of other evidences of said debts, to take the place of said bonds now so registered, as he would have done in the year 1908 but for the illegal guardianship proceeding already referred to.
'That your orator has been, since the month of October, 1908, and still is, the true lessee of said box, the rental of which has been paid with funds furnished by your orator, and, as above shown, at all times owner of the contents thereof; that said Alexander Brown & Sons have not been and are not in any manner responsible either for said box or for the custody of the contents of the same, or in or for any matter growing out of the arrangement under which said box was rented and said registered bonds placed therein; that as to the American Bonding Company, it has had no connection with or interest in the rental of said box or the custody of the contents of the same except as surety of your orator upon his bond as guardian, which said suretyship was undertaken in the aforesaid illegal guardianship proceeding which has been declared void and set aside.'
After reciting the provisions of a memorandum agreement between the plaintiff and defendant Brown & Sons and the Bonding Company by which the joint access to the box in which the bonds were deposited should be had for the purpose of cutting the coupons from the bonds and turning them over to the complainant, it was averred that neigher the American Bonding Company nor Brown & Sons set up any interest antagonistic to the complainant, but that he was unable to get access to the box where the bonds were deposited without a decree authorizing him to do so, and that such a decree was necessary for the protection of Brown & Sons and the Safe Deposit & Trust Company. It was then averred that the defendant sheriff of Baltimore county 'has filed in the superior court of Baltimore, a court of law of the state of Maryland, returns to certain writs of attachment stating that he has seized the aforesaid particular debts under such writs issued out of said court in five suits brought by divers nonresidents of the state of Maryland against your orator upon the ground of your orator's nonresidence in said state, to recover upon divers claims alleged to have arisen out of said state; that the said proceedings of the said defendant sheriff under said writs, purporting under color of the attachment statutes of Maryland and of said writs to seize said debts which are owned by your orator in the state of New York, are illegal and void; that your orator has not been personally served with process in said suits; that said debts have not and cannot be seized under said writs, not being property in the state of Maryland; that the defendant sheriff by his said proceedings under said writs has attempted and is attempting to interfere with said box and its contents, and to encumber your orator's title to said particular debts, and has sought and is seeking to deprive your orator of his property and of the effective control thereof and of the use thereof without due process of law, and to deprive your orator of the equal protection of the laws, in violation of the Constitution of the United States, and particularly of § 1 of the 14th Amendment thereto; that said superior court of Baltimore city has no personal jurisdiction over your orator, and has not gained jurisdiction over the aforesaid box or its contents, or over the debts owned by your orator in the state of New York, and the said defendant sheriff has no lawful authority to impede or seek to impede or hinder your orator in the premises, nor to do any act tending to defeat your orator's control of the said debts or the evidences thereof, or to prevent your orator from securing the relief applied for herein, and which this court has jurisdiction to grant your orator, and that the said unlawful proceedings of the said sheriff, under color of said writs, will, if persisted in, constiture an unlawful interference with the jurisdiction of this court in the premises.'
The prayer was that the complainant be decreed to be the lessee of...
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