Spence v. Northern Virginia Doctors Hospital Corp.

117 S.E.2d 657, 202 Va. 478, 1961 Va. LEXIS 132
CourtSupreme Court of Virginia
DecidedJanuary 16, 1961
DocketRecord 5155
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 117 S.E.2d 657 (Spence v. Northern Virginia Doctors Hospital Corp.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Virginia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Spence v. Northern Virginia Doctors Hospital Corp., 117 S.E.2d 657, 202 Va. 478, 1961 Va. LEXIS 132 (Va. 1961).

Opinion

I’Anson, J.,

delivered the opinion of the court.

The appellant, Dr. William T. Spence, is here on an appeal granted from a decree of the court below dissolving a temporary injunction and dismissing the bill of complaint filed by him, Drs. John T. Hazel, Raymond Schwartz and William D. Dolan, which prayed that the appellees, Northern Virginia Doctors Hospital Corporation and the president and secretary thereof, be restrained from selling or disposing of 6220 shares, or any part thereof, of the stock of the corporation which they allege were purchased by them and Dr. Henry L. Bastien through Balogh & Co., underwriting agent of the hospital corporation, until their rights have been determined; that the hospital corporation and its officers be required to transfer the shares of stock in accordance with their purchase order as follows: 1620 to Dr. Dolan, 1900 to Dr. Spence, 800 to Dr. Hazel, 1500 to Dr. Schwartz, and 400 to Dr. Bastien, who was not a party to the suit; and that the corporation not be permitted to hold a stockholders’ meeting until the stock has been transferred as requested.

Seventeen persons, two of whom were the president and secretary of the hospital corporation, filed a petition as intervenors alleging that they had a claim against the 6220 shares of stock by virtue of a subscription agreement between them and the hospital corporation. They did not seek an adjudication of their claim in the event the court below determined that the complainants had failed to sustain their bill by proof, or if the bill was dismissed for any reason. Hence the court made no adjudication of their rights and they are not parties to this appeal.

Hazel, Schwartz and Dolan are not appealing from the decree of the court below.

The appellant’s principal assignment of error is that the court erred in not directing the hospital corporation to issue to him “and *480 his designees” 6220 shares of the corporation stock. He relies on the facts offered in evidence and cites no case in support of his contention.

Although the appellant alleged in the bill of complaint that he was entitled to have 1900 shares of the 6220 transferred to his name, he now claims before us that he and “his designees” are entitled to the entire 6220 shares. He is bound by his allegations in the bill and cannot assert before us a case different from that presented in the lower court. The rights of “his designees,” Hazel, Schwartz and Dolan, have been determined adversely to them, to which there has been no appeal, and the decree of the court below is final as to them. See Universal C. I. T. Credit Corporation v. Kaplan, 198 Va. 67, 69-70, 92 S. E. 2d 359, 361. Under no theory of the appellant’s case is he entitled to more than 1900 shares. The hospital corporation is willing to transfer to Spence 1900 shares, but he insists that he is entitled to the entire 6220 shares and states that he is not interested in acquiring less than that number.

The evidence was heard ore tenus by the court below, and is as follows:

The Northern Virginia Doctors Hospital Corporation was incorporated in Virginia on May 24, 1957, for the purpose of constructing and operating a proprietary doctors’ hospital in Arlington county.

The hospital corporation made a public offering of 30,000 shares of its stock at $10 a share. The Riggs National Bank of Washington, D. C ., was named by the corporation as its exclusive transfer agent. Various brokerage firms acted at times as agents for the sale of the stock, each of them being the exclusive agent for the time they were so engaged. A great number of the shares were sold, but in April and May of 1959 the sales were lagging. In order to complete the sale of all the unsold stock offered, and to comply with the requirements of a commitment for a construction loan from the Arlington Trust Company, the directors of the hospital corporation, with the approval and consent of Balogh & Co., the underwriting sales agent at the time, had prepared and circulated a subscription contract for the sale of 6400 shares of stock. Balogh & Co. agreed to set aside and withdraw from public sale 6400 of the 8'603 shares it was authorized to sell at the time, to handle the bookkeeping and the funds collected under the subscription contract, and to give the commissions derived from the sale of the 6220 shares, which would *481 amount to approximately $9,000, to the hospital corporation as a donation. (The record does not show when the 6400 shares set aside and withdrawn from public sale by Balogh & Co. were reduced to 6220 shares.)

The subscription contract, which Balogh was familiar with, provided that the subscribers whose names were signed thereto agreed to take the number of shares opposite their names and to pay fifty percent of the subscription price on or before July 15, 1959, and the balance at such times and in such amounts as might be required by the directors of the hospital corporation, but in any event the balance due would be paid before the date that construction of stage one of the hospital was completed. It further provided that the stock subscribed to was a part of the remaining 8603 shares of the stock of the corporation offered to the public, and in the event the 8603 shares were not reliably subscribed on or before July 30, 1959, the subscriptions would be null and void.

Sixty-three persons reliably subscribed f'or all of the shares withdrawn from public sale pursuant to the agreement, confirmation notices of their purchases were mailed by Balogh & Co., and $21,900 was paid on the purchase price, which amount was less than fifty percent of the amount due under the subscription contract. All of the 8603 shares were subscribed to or sold by July 30, 1959.

Balogh testified that on July 27, 1959, he notified Mr. O’Neil, administrator of the hospital corporation, who prepared and circulated the subscription agreement, that he could no longer go along with the agreement of fifty percent payment in accordance with the subscription contract and demanded that the balance due on all of the stock sold under the subscription contract be paid on or before July 31, 1959. At the request of O’Neil he extended the time until 12 noon on August 3, 1959, and stated to him that if the entire balance was not paid on that date the sales would be cancelled and the checks returned. Between 2:00 and 2:30 o’clock on the afternoon of August 3rd, Schwartz, who was vice president, a director and member of the executive committee of the hospital corporation, Dolan, Hazel and Spence visited Balogh’s office and discussed with him their possible purchase of the 6220 shares set aside under the subscription agreement, but there had been some discussion of the matter between Spence and Balogh prior to that time. Late in the afternoon of the same day Balogh & Co. mailed to the 63 subscribers notices of cancellation of their subscriptions and returned their checks, *482 which the company had kept in its files and not deposited to the escrow account of the hospital corporation. Balogh received a phone call from the appellant at his home on August 3, at 5:15 p.m., as a result of which he considered he had made a firm sale of the 6220 shares to Spence and the parties to be later named by Spence. Balogh also testified that: “I had not sold the shares until the morning of the 4th of August.”

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Bluebook (online)
117 S.E.2d 657, 202 Va. 478, 1961 Va. LEXIS 132, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/spence-v-northern-virginia-doctors-hospital-corp-va-1961.