Pollock v. Sykes

74 Miss. 700
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedMarch 15, 1897
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 74 Miss. 700 (Pollock v. Sykes) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pollock v. Sykes, 74 Miss. 700 (Mich. 1897).

Opinion

Whitfield, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

The one thing raised into prominent relief by the record, standing out clear and distinct as a mountain in the landscape, is the purpose of Lancitot to secure payment to the creditors named in the trust instrument. It was about that he was exercised. That had been, for some days prior to the execution of either instrument, fully and finally determined upon by him. They had furnished the money upon which he had operated, had been his friends in need, and, naturally, he desired to, and determined to, protect them by preference. And, so far as any fully formed purpose as to the disposition of any of his property was concerned, that purpose was the only one originating with him, as determined upon by him up to the time of the conversations with his attorneys. True, he told Bowen some two days before the instruments were executed, that if he made an assignment, he would be protected; but this shows only [710]*710a floating, shadowy thought as to what he might do as to an assignment, and negatives clearly any existence in his mind, then, of a definite determination to do so. But he also told Bowen, in that very conversation, that he had fixed the bank matter. One purpose was fully formed and settled. As to the assignment he had no purpose. The possibility merely that he might do so, had occurred vaguely to him. When his attorneys suggested to him that the execution of the trust deed would necessarily close his business, he, then, for the first time, determined to make the assignment. The trust deed was, in pursuance of his original purpose, executed some thirty minutes before the assignment, though both may have been prepared for execution coetaneously. But the fact that he, at the suggestion of his attorneys, then formed the purpose to execute an assignment, cannot, in reason or principle, affect the other purpose, prior in existence as to time, and different in nature, to execute the trust deed. Both may have been conceived before either was born, but indisputably one was conceived before the other, and one was born before the other, and the twins were as unlike, in essential nature, as Esau and Jacob. The instruments manifest wholly distinct purposes, and the purposes were fully formed and determined upon, in the mind of the grantor, at different times, originated from wholly different motives and considerations, and were not supplementary the one of the other, but have distinct and separate purposes, appropriately manifested by instruments separate and distinct in their nature. The test, in all these cases, must be what was the thought, intent and purpose in the mind of the grantor.

Time is of evidential value only, greater or less according to • the particular circumstances of each case, not determinative. Peed v. Elliott, 34 N. E. R., 320; Shillito v. McConnell, 26 N. E. R., 832. When the time between the execution of the instruments is very short, the inference of identity of transaction, oneness of purpose in making both, is, of course, stronger. But it is true, also, that where attention is directed too exclu[711]*711sively to mere nearness of time, there is danger of unreasonably straining that inference. To hold with the supreme court of Illinois (Preston v. Spaulding, 120 Ill., 208) that, where the mere mental determination has been first reached to make a general assignment, to dispose of all, whatever instruments may be subsequently executed must all be referred to that mental determination, will not help appellants, for no such determination to make a general assignment was first and orig-' inally formed by Lancitot. Or to hold with the supreme court of Indiana (Shillito.v. McConnell, 26 N. E. R., 835) that the Illinois test is unsound, because human tribunals have no practical means of ascertaining just when such mental determination was formed, and hence, that the proof must show, in addition to the fact that the mental determination to make a general assignment was first formed, some act — such as the execution or commencement to execute such general assignment — also furnishes appellants no aid; for again it is to be said, that here no such purpose, first and originally, to make the assignment, existed. See, emphatically upholding this view, Shillito v. McConnell, 26 N. E. R., 832. The holding of both these courts, properly xmderstood, is merely that when the determination to make the assignment is first and originally formed, the determination subsequently formed to also make instruments containing preferences, both being thus executed, makes void all the instruments — thus parts clearly of a common scheme, and that scheme one to evade the statute against preferences in a general assignment. But he who first determines to make only a special provision for particular creditors by a trust deed on part only of his property, not then intending to make a general assignment, may never either form the purpose of making such assignment, or in fact make it. There was, in such case, in his mind no common scheme to dispose of all, with the trust deed as part of such scheme. And if afterwards, he — the special provision having been previously fully determined upon — from new considerations suggested to [712]*712him, does so subsequently determine to make such assignment, and does make it, such purpose is clearly not one with the first, but a wholly separate and independent purpose, and when, as here, that first purpose of his, is first completely executed, the special provision is, on this ground, unassailable.

It involves a plain fallacy to argue that whatever Lancitot’s first purpose may have been, when his attorneys suggested to 'him the then necessity of an assignment, he then changed that first purpose, and formed the one new purpose of making both instruments; for the first purpose was not changed, the trust deed being executed in pursuance of the original unchanged purpose, and the assignment was the product of a wholly distinct purpose then first formed.

What was done as to extending the receivership over both trust estates could not alter the essentially distinct natures of the trusts. That was mere administration of two separate trusts, specially prayed to be separately treated. This is so decided, in principle, in Field v. Geohegan., 16 N. E. Rep., 912. Much stress is placed on White v. Cotzhausen, 129 U. S., 329, by learned counsel for appellants. But, as clearly pointed out in the masterly opinion of Kellam, J., in Sandwich Mfg. Co. v. Max, 24 Lawyers’ Rep. Annotated, 529, the supreme court of the United States professed in that case only to enforce the law of Illinois as it supposed it to have been announced in Preston v. Spaulding, supra. And it misconceived that case, as is shown in the case of Union Bank of Chicago v. Kansas City Bank, 136 U. S., 223; and in this case it is also shown that some of the circuit judges of the United States had similarly misconceived the decisions of the supreme court of Missouri. See, also, May v. Tenny, 148 U. S., 60.

The case of Sandwich Mfg. Co. v. Max, supra, is remarkable for the vigor and ability with which it emphasizes the doctrine that in those states where preferences are prohibited in general assignments, the prohibition is not of preferences per se but of preferences in such instruments, and of the right of [713]*713an insolvent debtor in such states to prefer otherwise, and of the justness of the right of preference. Selleck v. Pollock, 69 Miss.

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Bluebook (online)
74 Miss. 700, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pollock-v-sykes-miss-1897.