Reynolds v. Enterprise Transportation & Transit Co.

• Decision Date: 20 May 1908
• Citation: 198 Mass. 590,85 N.E. 110
• Parties: REYNOLDS BORDEN v. ENTERPRISE TRANSPORTATION & TRANSIT CO. (BAILEY, Intervener). BORDEN v. SAME.
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

198 Mass. 590

85 N.E. 110

REYNOLDS BORDEN v. ENTERPRISE TRANSPORTATION & TRANSIT CO. (BAILEY, Intervener). BORDEN v. SAME.

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Bristol.

May 20, 1908

COUNSEL

John W Cummings and Charles R. Cummings, for plaintiff Reynolds.

Swift Grime & Kerns, for plaintiff Borden.

Samuel Williston, for claimant.

OPINION

KNOWLTON C.J.

The question presented by the bill of exceptions is the same in each of these two cases, namely: Whether Rev. Laws, c. 167 §§ 126, 127, declaring that an attachment of property on mesne process shall be dissolved by the appointment of a receiver to take possession of such property, are applicable to a case where the receiver is appointed by the Circuit Court of the United States.

The language of the statute, 'by any court of competent jurisdiction in this commonwealth,' standing alone, is broad enough to include the federal courts, and if all the provisions of the statute were properly applicable to proceedings in these courts, we should be inclined to give the appointment of a receiver in them the same effect as it would have if made in a state court. But section 127 provides that, when an attachment has been dissolved under the preceding section, 'the proceedings for the appointment of a receiver shall not thereafter be dismissed and the receiver discharged, until all the assets which have come into his hands as receiver have been fully distributed, or the claim upon which the attachment was made has been fully paid and discharged, unless the debtor, before such dismissal, deposits with the officer who made the attachment such amount of money as the court before which such receivership proceedings are pending, after notice to the attaching creditor and a hearing, finds reasonable for the protection of his claim in the action in which the attachment was made.'

In Second National Bank of Pittsburg v. C.J. Lappe Tanning Company, 198 Mass. 159, 84 N.E. 301, decided March 2, 1908, it was held that a court in which proceedings of an ancillary receivership were pending had no power to transmit the assets to the domiciliary receiver, after the dissolution of an attachment under this statute, until provision had been made for the attaching creditor under section 127.

Prior to the enactment of this statute, attachments in force at the time of the appointment of a receiver were not dissolved by the appointment. Kittredge v. Osgood, 161 Mass. 384, 37 N.E. 369; Merrill v. Commonwealth Fire Insurance Company, 166 Mass. 238, 44 N.E. 144. The case first above cited holds that the statute recognizes the preference that a creditor obtains through his attachment, and while compelling him to share with other creditors, who avail themselves of the receivership, it secures to him the right to have the property distributed through the receivership that deprives him of his attachment, unless the debt is secured otherwise under the statute. This result is reached under the statute by controlling the court in its proceedings, and prohibiting a disposition of the assets which the court might order were it not for the prohibition. This prohibition is an interference with a power and jurisdiction which the court has from other sources, independently of the statute, and for purposes outside of the provisions of the statute.

Our Legislature has no power so to control a federal court, or so to interfere with its proceedings authorized by laws outside of this statute. Boyle v. Zacharie, 6 Pet. (U. S.) 648-658, 8 L.Ed. 532; Foster's Fed. Pr. (1st Ed.) p. 8, par. 6. A federal court might entirely disregard the prohibition contained in section 127, as an attempt at unlawful interference with its rights and powers. The Legislature must be presumed to have known this, and not to have enacted an illegal and ineffectual law.

Plainly it was not intended that an attachment should be...