Northwestern Land Ass'n v. Grady

• Decision Date: 28 February 1903
• Citation: 33 So. 874,137 Ala. 219
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court
• Parties: NORTHWESTERN LAND ASS'N ET AL. v. GRADY.

33 So. 874

137 Ala. 219

NORTHWESTERN LAND ASS'N ET AL. v. GRADY.

Supreme Court of Alabama

February 28, 1903

Appeal from Chancery Court, Madison County; W. H. Simpson Chancellor.

Bill by James M. Grady, a stockholder in the Northwestern Land Association, against the Northwestern Land Association and certain of its officers, and certain other parties who are averred to have conspired with such officers to deprive the corporation of valuable property, etc. Decree for complainant, and respondents appeal. Affirmed.

The purpose of the bill and the facts necessary to an understanding of the decision are sufficiently stated in the opinion. Respondents demurred to the bill on the grounds that it was multifarious, and, further, that it was shown by its averments that the acts complained of transpired more than three and six years before the filing of the bill, and that the relief sought was therefore barred by limitations. On the submission of the cause on the demurrer, the chancellor rendered a decree overruling them. Respondents assign the rendition thereof as error. Respondents also assign as error a decree made by the chancellor in vacation, setting aside a former decree dismissing the bill and reinstating the cause.

Cooper & Foster and Jere Murphy, for appellants.

Chas B. Powell, for appellee.

DOWDELL J.

The appeal in this case is taken from an interlocutory decree of the chancellor overruling the demurrers of the respondents to the complainant's bill as amended. Without the statute--section 427--such an appeal would be unauthorized. The party would be compelled to await a final decree in the cause before the right of appeal to this court would arise. The statute confers no right of appeal from an interlocutory decree, on a motion to set aside an order, by which a cause that has been dismissed for want of prosecution is restored to the docket. Nor can such decretal order be reviewed here on an appeal taken under the statute from a decree on demurrer. Our jurisdiction, which is appellate, is restricted to a consideration of the questions, only, raised on the decree from which the appeal is sued out.

The bill is filed by a stockholder, and its purpose is to annul and set aside certain alleged fraudulent conveyances by which the corporate property has been wasted and lost to the corporation and the stockholders, and all through a common scheme and conspiracy on the part of the managing officers of the corporation, into which the other respondents entered and participated. As a part of the alleged conspiracy and common design to defraud, it is also averred in the bill that certain decrees of the chancery court were fraudulently obtained, by and through which conveyances of the corporate property were effected, and these decrees are sought to be annulled and set aside, as well as the conveyances resulting under them. The prayer for relief, among other things, is that the property thus fraudulently conveyed be restored to the corporation, and that the fraudulent grantors and grantees be held for an accounting for any loss.

It is contended by counsel for appellants that the bill is multifarious in that it seeks to set aside certain alleged fraudulent conveyances by the corporation...