Webb v. Cohen
| Decision Date | 14 September 1932 |
| Parties | WEBB et al. v. COHEN. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Exceptions from Superior Court, Essex County; Franklin T. Hammond, Judge.
Action by Ruby B. Webb and others, administratrices of the estate of G. N. Parker, deceased, against Max Cohen, in which H. P. Hood & Sons, Inc., was served with trustee process. On plaintiffs' exceptions to an order of the court allowing the trustee's motion to correct the docket.
Exceptions overruled.
Edward Fisher, of Lowell, for plaintiffs.
Benjamin B. Piper, of Charlestown, for trustee.
A claimant's bond to dissolve an attachment of funds in the hands of an alleged trustee in an action begun by trustee process in the superior court was filed in court on July 2, 1929, and a record of such filing was then made on the docket. The clerk of the court issued under the seal of the court a certificate that such bond had been filed and the trustee, upon presentation of this certificate and before the entry of the writ, paid to the claimant the funds held by it under the attachment. At some later time the plaintiffs directed the attention of the clerk of the court to the fact that the claimant had not entered an appearance in the case and thereupon the clerk without any order of court struck from the docket the entry he had made, the bond itself remaining among the papers in the case. Before judgment, but after the trustee had been charged on its answers to interrogatories, a motion of the trustee to correct the docket by adding thereto a record of the filing of the bond on July 2, 1929, was allowed by a judge of the court. The plaintiffs excepted to the allowance of the motion and to the refusal of the judge to give certain requests for rulings.
The sole question here presented is whether the judge erred in allowing the motion to amend the record. There is an inherent and necessary power in a court of justice acting on the motion of an interested party, at the suggestion of one not a party, or on its own motion to correct errors and remedy omissions in its records in order that they shall speak the truth. Balch v. Shaw, 7 Cush. 282, 284;Merrill v. Kaulback, 158 Mass. 328, 329, 33 N. E. 515;Farris v. St. Paul's Baptist Church, 220 Mass. 356, 359, 107 N. E. 955;Everett-Morgan Co. v. Boyajian Pharmacy, 244 Mass. 460, 462, 139 N. E. 170. It is very plain that the judge properly exercised that power in the present instance. The trustee, while a party to the case, was merely a stakeholder and, as such, entitled to the protection of the court so far as reasonably practicable. Cavanaugh v. Merrimac Hat Co., 213 Mass. 384, 100 N. E. 662;Reynolds v. Missouri, Kansas & Texas Railway, 224 Mass. 253, 254, 112 N. E. 859;Eastern Fur & Skin Co. v. Sternfeld, 233 Mass. 210, 212, 123 N. E. 668. The bond given by the claimant conformed to the requirements of the statutes. It was filed in court as the statutes provide such a bond must be filed. G. L. c. 246, § 66; c. 223, §§ 125, 123. As soon as the bond was filed in court the trustee had specific authority under the statutes to deliver to the claimant the funds in its hands. G. L. c. 246, § 67. The...
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