Athol Music Hall Co. v. Carey

116 Mass. 471, 1875 Mass. LEXIS 16

• Court: Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court
• Decided: January 5, 1875
• Status: Published

Opinion

Wells, J.

In agreements of this nature, entered into before the organization is formed, or the agent constituted to receive the amounts subscribed, the difficulty is to ascertain the promisee, in whose name alone suit can be brought. The promise of each subscriber, “ to and with each other,” is not a contract capable of being enforced, or intended to operate literally as a contract to be enforced between each subscriber and each other who may have signed previously, or who should sign afterwards, nor between each subscriber and all the others collectively as individuals. The undertaking is inchoate and incomplete as a contract until the contemplated organization is effected, or the mutual agent constituted to represent the association of individual rights in accepting and acting upon the propositions offered by the several subscriptions. When thus accepted, the promise may be construed to have legal effect according to its purpose and intent, and the practical necessity of the case; to wit, as a contract with the common representative of the several associates.

In Thompson v. Page, 1 Met. 565, and Ives v. Sterling, 6 Met. 310, individuals subsequently selected by voluntary associations to receive and expend subscriptions, in accordance with the terms of the agreement of association, were allowed to maintain actions against individual subscribers for the amount of their several subscriptions. Being thus constituted the payees, they were construed to have become also the promisees under the written agreement. The same principle applies where the agreement contemplates the organization of a corporation, and refers the payment of the subscriptions to the proper officers of such corporation. See People's Ferry Co. v. Balch, 8 Gray, 303, 311.

In this agreement the treasurer of the corporation to be established is expressly made payee. The corporation is the aggregate of the several individuals entering into the agreement, one of whose terms was that they should thus associate and confer their individual rights upon the corporation. „ We are of opinion that the corporation, and the corporation alone, is the proper j.arty to bring an action upon such an agreement.

The corresponding agreements of the other subscribers, the organization of the corporation, and the allotment to the defendant of the shares for which he subscribed, furnish sufficient consideration for his promise to take and pay for those shares. Although bis promise was originally voluntary, or in the nature of a mere open proposition, yet having been accepted and acted on by the party authorized so to do, before he attempted to retract it, he has lost the right to revoke. His proposition has become an accepted mutual contract, and is binding upon him as well as upon the corporation. The votes of the corporation indicate sufficient authority for the institution of this suit in the corporate name and behalf.

These considerations dispose of all the objections, taken in-various forms, to the maintenance of the action.

Exceptions overruled.