State ex rel. American Lead & Baryta Co. v. Dearing

84 S.W. 21, 184 Mo. 647, 1904 Mo. LEXIS 292
CourtSupreme Court of Missouri
DecidedDecember 13, 1904
StatusPublished
Cited by8 cases

This text of 84 S.W. 21 (State ex rel. American Lead & Baryta Co. v. Dearing) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Missouri primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State ex rel. American Lead & Baryta Co. v. Dearing, 84 S.W. 21, 184 Mo. 647, 1904 Mo. LEXIS 292 (Mo. 1904).

Opinion

MARSHALL, J.

This is an original proceeding in prohibition to prohibit the defendant judge from further enforcing or carrying into effect an order appointing the defendant Donnell as receiver for the relator company, the American Lead & Baryta Company, made in a suit heretofore instituted and now pending in the circuit court of Washington county, wherein the defendant William J. Elledge is the plaintiff and the American Lead & Baryta Company and others are the defendants.

A preliminary rule in prohibition was heretofore issued in this case. The defendant Elledge filed a motion to quash the writ. The defendant Donnell filed a return showing compliance with the commands of the preliminary rule, and submitting himself to the further order of this court. Before the return day of the preliminary rule the defendant Dearing, Judge, died, and his successor has been appointed and qualified, and he now adopts a return which had been prepared by his predecessor, and which had been filed by defendant Elledge as a part of his motion to quash. The. matter has been fully argued by learned counsel and submitted for decision.

The pleadings and exhibits filed in this case are quite too voluminous to be reproduced or even fully abstracted in an opinion. For the purposes of this case it is only necessary to state the ultimate facts shown, and they will be stated in substantially the chronological order of their occurrence.

Some time prior to November 22,1900, the defendant Elledge and one William Long had secured options to buy some twenty-six thousand acres of land in Washington county, which were believed to contain rich ores, and especially baryta and other basic elements of paints. 0-. E. Robinson lived in Baltimore, Maryland, [652]*652and was engaged in the business of manufacturing paints in that city. .He was the president of the National Mining and Milling Company, which was located in Baltimore, and he or the company owned certain patents or processes and machinery for the manufacture of paints. '

About the twenty-second of November, 1900, Elledge, Long, Robinson, G. H. TenBroek, John Morton and Moses Greenwood, Jr., agreed to form and did form a corporation, to be known as the American Lead & Baryta Company, with a capital stock of ten million dollars and a bond issue of one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Robinson was to put into the company the pátents, processes, machinery, etc., of the National Milling Company, and to take therefor two million dollars of the capital stock and one hundred thousand dollars of said bonds. Elledge and Long were to turn over to the company the options they held on the twenty-six thousand acres of land aforesaid, which it is alleged were worth one million dollars.

Accordingly, the American Lead & Baryta Company was organized under the laws of Delaware, and obtained a license* to do business in this State, and opened, an office in the "Wainwright building in St. Louis. Robinson was made president of the company.' It was the original intention to sell enough stock' and bonds to pay for the lands on which options were held as aforesaid, and to pay Robinson or the National Mining and Milling Company for the patents, machinery, etc., aforesaid, in stocks and bonds as aforesaid, and the profits of the venture,. according to Elledge, to be divided one-fifth each to Greenwood, TenBroek, Morton and Robinson and one-t.enth each to Elledge and Long. It being the original intention that the stock should be sold so as to pay for the options aforesaid, and to secure working capital for the company, all of the stock except enough shares to make up a board of directors, was issued in the name of the president, Robinson. It [653]*653was agreed that Elledge, Greenwood, TenBroek and Long should make diligent efforts to sell the stock and bonds aforesaid.

The value of the patents, machinery, etc., that Eobinson or the National Mining and Milling Company were to put into the new company is nowhere stated, •but the petition in the original case alleges that Eobinson represented them to be of great value and that the business of said National Company was being conducted at a profit of sixty thousand dollars a year, but that such patents, machinery, etc., were not turned over to the new company. On the contrary it is charged that money borrowed by the new company was being diverted by Eobinson to pay the debts of the National ■Company and were applied to his own use.

The attempt to sell the stock and bonds of the new •company and thereby to raise money to pay for the lands in Washington county proved futile; the options were about to expire, and therefore an arrangement was made in 1901 with the Missouri Trust Company to •advance the new company the' sum of five hundred thousand dollars, with which to pay for the lands, and as security therefor the title to the land was -to be conveyed direct to the Trust Company, to be held by it until the stock and bonds could be issued, when the Trust Company was to take one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars of bonds and the same .amount of stock of the company. The Trust Company also required O. E. Eobinson to execute to it his two notes, one for four hundred thousand dollars, indorsed by his brothers J. K. Eobinson and A. H. Eobinson, and •one for one hundred thousand dollars indorsed by said Morton and Jacob Stocke.

Accordingly the Trust Company advanced the five hundred thousand dollars, and Elledge and Long transferred to it the options on the land held by them, out •of which the Trust Company paid for the land and took the legal title in its own name, and Eobinson ex-[654]*654edited the two notes aforesaid. The new company then began business by establishing four stores, buying some horses and mules and proceeded with its mining and business operations. Elledge became general or district manager of the company, and continued to act as. such until he instituted the original suit, and as such manager was paid something over five thousand dollars, for his services.

The business of the company was thus carried on for about two years, and the plaintiff and Greenwood and TenBroek and Long were all the while, unsuccessfully engaged in trying to negotiate the bonds and sell the .stock. In the early part of the present year the-Trust Company, never having received the stock and the bonds aforesaid, threatened to sell the land. In the meantime there had been suits going on about the title to certain of the lands. The Baryta Company had had to borrow about thirty thousand dollars and Robinson had indorsed the notes and pledged certain of' the stock to secure the notes. Robinson had'also advanced considerable money for the company, said by relator to have amounted to thirty-five thousand dollars, and incurred about eight thousand dollars liability for the company, and had never received a cent of the twenty-five thousand dollars a year that he was to-receive as president of the company.

In this plight the Baryta Company, through Robinson and Morton, made an arrangement with the Trust. Company, whereby that company advanced about one-hundred and thirty-five thousand dollars more, to clear-up the title to the land, and it was agreed that time,, until June 1, 1904, should be given the Baryta Company to pay up what it owed the Trust Company, and that in the meantime Morton should devise some-method of reorganizing and refinancing the Baryta. Company.

Morton devised a scheme whereby the old ten-million-dollar stock issue and the old million and a quarter [655]

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Bluebook (online)
84 S.W. 21, 184 Mo. 647, 1904 Mo. LEXIS 292, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-american-lead-baryta-co-v-dearing-mo-1904.