Sullivan v. Andoe

• Decision Date: 05 April 1881
• Citation: 6 F. 641
• Parties: SULLIVAN and others v. ANDOE and others.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Fourth Circuit

6 F. 641

SULLIVAN and others v. ANDOE and others.

United States Circuit Court, D. Maryland.

April 5, 1881

Willoughby N. Smith, Robert G. Keene, John Henry Keene, Jr., and Archibald Stirling, Jr., for complainants.

J. T Mason, R., and S. T. Wallis, for defendants.

MORRIS D.J.

This is a bill in equity filed by certain aliens, residing in Ireland, claiming to be the next of kin of Edward Sullivan deceased, late of the city of St. Louis, in the state of Missouri, and entitled to his personal estate, charging that the sums of money obtained by certain of the defendants in a distribution of his personal estate heretofore made by the probate court for the city of St. Louis were obtained by fraud practiced upon that court, and praying for a decree setting aside that distribution and compelling the defendants to bring into this court the money received by them, to the end that the complainants may receive what they claim belongs to them.

It appears that in 1866 Edward Sullivan died in St. Louis unmarried and intestate. He was found dead in his room, and the coroner was about to have his body interred at the public expense, when it was discovered, through John Maquire, an agent who had been employed by him in the management of his property, that he was a person of considerable fortune. Maguire was subsequently appointed, by the probate court of St. Louis, his administrator, settled his debts and funeral expenses, and distributed the residue of his personal estate under orders of that court.

To procure that distribution a certain Henry Murta, (now dead,) then residing in the state of Pennsylvania, filed in said probate court his affidavit, dated January 30, 1869, in which he swore that he was a second cousin of the deceased; that the intestate had come to this country from Ireland, and never had a brother, and had had but one sister, who had died in Ireland, at the age of 45 years, unmarried; that the father, mother, grandfather and grandmother, uncles and aunts of the intestate had long been dead; that the only one of his uncles or aunts who had left descendants was an uncle named Matthew Andoe; that the only child of this Matthew Andoe living at the death of the intestate was a certain Rosanna Andoe, a lunatic, then about 65 years of age, and an inmate of Mount Hope insane asylum, near the city of Baltimore, in the state of Maryland; that said lunatic had had a sister, Ann Andoe, who had married, in Ireland, a certain John Murta; and that he, the affiant, (Henry Murta,) was their son; that there had been other children of said marriage besides himself, but that none of them were ever married, and all but himself were dead at the date of the death of the intestate, except, perhaps, a brother of the affiant, named Matthew Murta, who went to Australia in poor health, in 1858, and who had not been heard from since 1858, when he had written to affiant, at Pittsburgh, that he was going from Australia to South America on account of his ill health, where affiant believed he had died; that affiant had had a cousin named Eliza Murta, who was last heard from in 1858, when she left Darlington, in the state of Pennsylvania, and had not since been heard from; that said Rosanna Andoe (the lunatic) and himself (the affiant) were the only living persons entitled to share in the distribution of the intestate's estate, unless the said Matthew Murta and Eliza Murta were living.

Two other affidavits only were filed. One James Creamer, who had known Henry Murta and his family in Ireland, made affidavit that he, the affiant, had come to this country about 19 years before, and that he believed that Henry Murta was the only living child of his parents, and that there were no descendants of any other, and that he had never heard of any relatives of the intestate except Rosanna Andoe and the said Henry Murta. One David D. Lynch made affidavit that he knew the Murta family in his boyhood in Ireland; that from what he knew he believed Henry Murta's parents were dead, and all his brothers and sisters had died without living descendants, and that said Henry Murta and the said Rosanna Andoe were the only living relatives of the intestate.

Upon these three affidavits, presented to the court by counsel, representing Henry Murta and Rosanna Andoe, a partial distribution of the personal estate was made by the administrator on February 6, 1869, under order of the court, and $3,000 was paid to the committee of Rosanna Andoe and the like sum to Henry Murta.

Shortly after this it appears that the widow of Edward Murta, a brother of the above-named affiant Henry Murta, saw in a newspaper some mention of this distribution, and she immediately caused affidavits of numberous witnesses to be filed in said probate court, establishing the fact that her husband, who had died in 1865, was a brother of Henry Murta; that she had been married to him in Pittsburgh in 1850, and that they had lived there continuously, and had four children who were living.

It appeared from the affidavits that Henry Murta, whose residence had been in Pittsburgh and St. Louis, and who, in his affidavit, had failed to mention this brother or his children, had from time to time lived in the same house with them in Pittsburgh, and a physician made affidavit that in December, 1859, he had attended Henry Murta during an illness at Edward Murta's house. Upon the showing made by these affidavits the children of Edward Murta were admitted without opposition to share in the estate, and a further distribution was made of $4,000 each to Henry Murta and the committee of Rosanna Andoe, and $1,750 to each of the four children of Edward Murta. These sums were paid by the administrator under an order of the court, dated fourteenth of June, 1869. On the twenty-seventh of September, 1869, there was a final settlement by the administrator, in which the committee of Rosanna Andoe received the further sum of $5,069.65.

The present suit was instituted in January, 1879, by Emily Sullivan, claiming to be a sister of the intestate, and by the son and daughter of John Sullivan, deceased, alleged to have been a brother of the intestate. These complainants claim that they are the persons and the only persons who, as his next of kin, had any right to the intestate's personal estate. The defendants in this suit are Rosanna Andoe, the lunatic; John T. Mason, R., her present committee; Elder, a former committee; Merryman, administrator of Scott, a deceased committee; the executor of Henry Murta, who is now dead; the four children of Edward Murta, and their guardian; and Maguire, the administrator of Edward Sullivan. The only defendants who have been summoned are Rosanna Andoe and Mason, her present committee; Elder, her former committee; and Merryman, the administrator of the deceased committee. The other defendants are now residents of this district, and have not been summoned, nor have they appeared or answered.

The proof which the complainants have produced convincingly establishes the relationship claimed by them to the intestate, Edward Sullivan. The family history of the intestate, and of his five brothers and one sister, is clearly proved by the testimony of numerous witnesses examined under a commission sent to Ireland, and they are corroborated in many essentials by the production of a copy of the will of the mother of the intestate, dated in 1838, in which the intestate is mentioned by name, and described as residing in Pittsburgh, in America, and the testator's nephew, John Andoe, is also mentioned as residing at Pittsburgh. Special provision is made for the support of the testator's only daughter, the complainant Emily Sullivan, who was then and now is both deaf and dumb; and the other sons of the testatrix, brothers of the intestate, are also mentioned.

It also clearly appears, we think, from the proof, that -henry Murta in the affidavit he made on the thirtieth of January, 1869, to procure the distribution ordered by the probate court of St. Louis, was guilty of many false statements and suppressions of the truth. It was not true, to begin with, that Matthew Andoe, his maternal grandfather, through whom he traced his relationship to the intestate, was the intestate's uncle, as he alleged. It was true, however, that his maternal grandmother was an aunt of the intestate. It was not true that his own mother, through whom he traced his kinship, was dead. She was then living in Ireland, and did not die until 1874, and letters had been received by her from him in 1866. The account he gave of the death of his own brothers and sisters was not true. Several of them were then living in Ireland, and also quite a number of his cousins, who were as nearly...