In re Ogles

93 F. 426, 1899 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35
CourtDistrict Court, W.D. Tennessee
DecidedMarch 23, 1899
DocketNo. 2
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 93 F. 426 (In re Ogles) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, W.D. Tennessee primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In re Ogles, 93 F. 426, 1899 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35 (W.D. Tenn. 1899).

Opinion

HAMMOND, J.

(after stating the facts as above). Obviously, this petition is multifarious. It unites with a prayer for an adjudication in bankruptcy against the debtor, which alone it should contain, a prayer for a seizure by the marshal, provisionally, of all . the property, books, and effects of the debtor, and also a further prayer for an injunction against the attaching creditors and the receiver of the state court. It is subject to all of the infirmities in pleading' and practice suggested by this court in Re Kelly, 91 Fed. 504. Bulas there is no application at this lime for any warrant of seizure of the bankrupt’s property, it is not necessary further to scrutinize the proceedings in regard to that prayer of the petition.

The petition should be dismissed for the defect of multifarionsness, were it not for the fact that it was filed before the supreme court had promulgated the general orders and forms in bankruptcy now in force. The bankruptcy statute of 1898 permitted petitions to be filed after four months from the passage of the act, but since the supreme court had not regulated the practice, as required by the statute, necessarily parties and their counsel were left to such forms of pleading as they might adopt. This petition follows the analo[430]*430gies of the bill in chancery, though it might have found a more appropriate analogy in the form prescribed for a creditors’ petition under the bankruptcy statute of 1867 (Form No. 54, Act 1867; Bump, Bankr. 933). The provisions for warrants of seizure, under the statute of 1898, ■ are somewhat different from those of 1867, but with that exception the form and prayer of the petition by creditors might be substantially the same under either act. It is my opinion that, under the circumstances, the courts should retain the informal petitions, however defective, that were filed before the promulgation of the general orders in bankruptcy and the forms regulating the practice by the supreme court, but that the pleadings necessarily should now, by amendment, be conformed to the practice prescribed by the supreme court. Therefore this petition should be remodeled to follow Form No. 3, prescribed by the supreme court for a creditors’ petition in a case of involuntary bankruptcy, and it is so ordered in this case. And it will be observed that, according to that form, the only prayer of the petition is that “service of this petition with a subpoena may be made upon (the alleged bankrupt) as provided in the acts of congress relating to bankruptcy and that he may be adjudged by the court to be a bankrupt within the purview of said acts.” All other prayers in this petition extraneous to Form No. 3 are foreign to the purpose of an involuntary petition in bankruptcy, and should therefore be eliminated. It is intended by congress that the practice in bankruptcy should be uniform under the rules prescribed by the supreme court, and there can be no departure from them, except as allowed .by Gen. Ord. 37. Similarly, and for the same reasons, the answer of the alleged bankrupt is informal and unknown to the practice; and it is ordered that it shall be remodeled, and made to conform to the “Denial in Bankruptcy” prescribed by Form No. 6 of the supreme court rules in bankruptcy, under the statute of 1898. But neither the petition nor the answer thereto should be withdrawn from the files, the parties having a right that the record shall remain intact in respect of that. But the clerk will enter an order and serve notice thereof upon the parties and their counsel, requiring them to reform their pleadings according to this opinion. Of course, the hew pleadings should be filed as of the same date as the original pleadings, to save the rights of the parties already accrued. In strict practice, all the multifarious matter in this petition should be disregarded as nugatory; but, as it was filed before the promulgation of the rules of the supreme court in bankruptcy, I am of the opinion that the parties should not lose the benefit of such proceedings as have been taken without a knowledge of what forms in practice would be prescribed by the supreme court. Therefore I have determined that this petition shall stand, as to such multifarious matter, as an independent petition, seeking the relief asked for; and that the original petition and answer and the affidavit just filed shall have the same effect as if the same matter- had been pleaded in point of law, as it should have been, as a proceeding in bankruptcy supplemental to the creditors’ petition for an involuntary adjudication.-

So-taken, ■ how does the case stand:;upon this application for an [431]*431injunction? The fifth amendment to the constitution of the United H fates provides that “no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law”; imposing the same limitation upon congress in respect of this that is imposed by the fourteenth amendment upon legislation by the states. Neither the attaching creditors in the state court, nor the receiver of that court, who is alleged by this petition and affidavit to hold the property in controversy, have been made parties to this petition, nor has any process been prayed against them as such. Neither has any been issued or served, although they are named in the petition, in the progress of the recitals therein. The petition is purely one against the alleged bankrupt, and there is no manifestation of am intention to make the attaching creditors of the receiver parties to that proceeding, except that it may be that it was in the mind of the pleader that the attaching creditors and the receivers became amenable, ipso facto, to the control of the court upon the filing of the involuntary petition against the debtor. This, to my mind, is wholly untenable, and -finds no warrant in any of the provisions of the bankruptcy statute. It is contemplated by several provisions of the statute that creditors, other than petitioning creditors, may become formal parties to the proceedings in bankruptcy, either before or after the adjudication, and, in some respects, they are bound whether they become formal parties or not, as, for example, in the matter of the"bankrupt’s discharge. But by section 59, subsecs, f, g, St. 1898, it is specifically provided that outside creditors may come in to join as plaintiffs in the petition for adjudication, or to “file an answer and be heard in opposition to (lie prayer of the petition.” Therefore, unless these attaching creditors have voluntarily, appeared to contest the petition or to join as plaintiffs in it, they have not, in any sense, become parties to the bankruptcy proceedings qua proceedings in bankruptcy. Now, it is a familiar rule of law that one holding property or claiming rights adversely to another, no matter how, must have a day in court, by proper process, upon appropriate proceedings for that purpose, or he cannot be said to have been subjected to the power of the courts “by due process of law.” The attaching creditors and the receiver, as is shown by the averments of this petition, are holding and claiming adversely to the alleged bankrupt and his other creditors. It is plain, therefore, that they cannot be deprived of their right to this property, whatever it be, nor any claim they have to it, except .upon plenary proceedings for that purpose, to which they have been made parties by process issuing from a court having jurisdiction of the subject-matter, and the authority to bring them in to answer whatever adverse claim may be set up against them.

This petition, in its present form, is not such a proceeding.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
93 F. 426, 1899 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 35, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-ogles-tnwd-1899.