State ex rel. German-American Safe Deposit & Savings Bank v. Superior Court

42 P. 123, 12 Wash. 677, 1895 Wash. LEXIS 240
CourtWashington Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 28, 1895
DocketNo. 2013
StatusPublished
Cited by13 cases

This text of 42 P. 123 (State ex rel. German-American Safe Deposit & Savings Bank v. Superior Court) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Washington Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State ex rel. German-American Safe Deposit & Savings Bank v. Superior Court, 42 P. 123, 12 Wash. 677, 1895 Wash. LEXIS 240 (Wash. 1895).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Hoyt, C. J.

The city of Tacoma commenced an action in the superior court of Pierce county against the relator herein, by which it was sought to have a receiver appointed to take possession of its assets and wind up its business.

[678]*678After an answer to the complaint had been-filed by the defendant, the application for the appointment of a receiver to take charge of the bank during the pendency of the action was, after hearing, granted, and an order duly made appointing S. B,. Balkwill as such receiver, and directing him to take possession of all the property of the defendant. From this order the defendant gave notice of appeal to this court, and filed a cost bond as required by the statute. It also, before the receiver had done anything in pursuance of such order, obtained from the court an order fixing- the amount in which it should give .a bond to stay proceedings under said order, and filed such bond, with sureties, who made several affidavits as to their responsibility as required by statute.

Thereafter, on the 19th day of October, 1895', exceptions were filed to the sufficiency of such 'sureties, and notice given to the defendant to produce them in court at ten o’clock in the forenoon of the 22d day of October, 1895. The sufficiency of the form of the bond was also attacked by exceptions served at the same time. On said 22d day of October, the defendant filed objections to the hearing of the exceptions, upon the ground that sufficient notice had not been given. The court disregarded these objections, and the defendant taking no further action and not producing the sureties on the bond for examination, certified the fact as to the non-appearance of the sureties and declared the bond void and held for naught. Thereupon the defendant proffered and filed in court a new .bond, sufficient in form and signed by sureties, who qualified as required by the statute. Whereupon the court, on its own motion, made and caused to be entered an order substantially as follows:

“Now, on this day immediately following the mak[679]*679ing of the certificate and order declaring the supersedeas bond filed in this case on the 19th day of October; A. D. 1895, void, comes the defendant by its-attorneys B. F. Heuston and T. W. Hammond and filed a paper purporting to be an additional supersedeas bond with Boyal A. Gove, B. B. Mullen, John Murray, Sarah H. Murray, J. A. Lawrence, 0. M. Lawrence, John H. Wilt, the same sureties who were on the first bond above referred to, each and all of whom failed and neglected to appear and justify, as shown by the records in this case, together with J. M. Junett, James A. Frace and C. 0. Bean as additional sureties on said bond, which additional sureties have qualified on said bond as follows:' J. M. Junett for $20,000.00, 0. 0. Bean for $10,000.00, and James A. Frace for $5,000.00, making a total of $35,000.00 and no more, and the court being of the opinion that said bond is void and of no effect for the reason that the qualification of the sureties thereon does not exceed the total sum of $35,000.00, except as to those sureties who were upon the supersedeas bond first above referred to and who have failed to appear or justify as required, making the total amount of the legal justification on said bond the sum of $35,000.00 and no more, when it should be one hundred and twenty thousand ($120,-000.00) dollars.
“ Whereupon the receiver, together, with his counsel, is directed to immediately take possession of the property of the said defendant.”

Acting under this order, the receiver, who had theretofore qualified, took possession of the property of the defendant over its protest, by the employment of force. The object of this proceeding is to obtain an order from this court prohibiting the superior court from further proceeding in the enforcement of its order for the appointment of a receiver, and to have set aside all that lias, been done thereunder since the filing of the supersedeas bond.

The grounds upon which this relief is asked are [680]*680that, upon the filing of the supersedeas bond, the superior court was deprived of jurisdiction to proceed further upon the order appealed from until such appeal had been heard and determined, and that, for that reason, it should be prohibited from proceeding further, and, to the end that the defendant might not lose the fruits of its appeal, it was entitled to have matters restored to the condition in which they were at the time of the filing of the supersedeas bond, and have them so maintained until the determination of the appeal. Some other reasons have been suggested why the relief prayed for should be granted, but, in our opinion, the rights of the parties must in this proceeding depend upon conclusions to be drawn upon the proceedings' above outlined.

The respondent, the judge of the superior court who made the order appealed from, and the city of Tacoma have appeared to show cause why the relief prayed for in the petition should not be granted. The first contention on behalf of each is that the order appealed from could not be superseded, and they cite some authorities to sustain their contention upon this point. The authorities so cited are not satisfactory, and if they were, would be of little weight here for the reason that the statutes of the states from which such authorities come were unlike ours. Our statute as to appeals, in one section, provides at length what judgments and orders may be appealed from, and in another section, in the same act, provides how proceedings on an order or judgment appealed from may be stayed,.and in our opinion it is clear that the legislature intended to give to the party prosecuting an appeal from any order or judgment the right to take advantage of the provisions for staying execution. There is no reason for holding that the provision as to stay bonds applies [681]*681to one order or judgment mentioned in the pi’eceding section and not to another, and as it must apply to some we feel compelled to hold that it applies to all, and since an order appointing a receiver is in express terms made appealable by the provisions of the act, it must be held that the provision as to the stay of proceedings, in the same act, applies to an order of that kind.

The reason given by the judge in his return, for proceeding in. the execution of the order for the appointment of the receiver after the stay bond was given, was that there was no appearance of the sureties in the first bond for the purposes of justification, and that for that reason such sureties were disqualified from becoming such on the new bond, and that, excluding such sureties from consideration, the new bond upon its face showed that it was not such a bond as was required by the statute. If the failure of a surety to appear when the party had been required to produce him for examination would, disqualify him from becoming a surety on a new bond, when the old one had been attacked only on account of the alleged insufficiency of the sureties, the rule would not apply in this case, for the reason that the bond was attacked by the plaintiff for want of form, and it was entirely proper for the defendant, if it thought such attack could not he successfully resisted, to abandon the attempt to make good the old bond and file a new one. But in our opinion a surety would not be disqualified by not being produced at the time required by the notice.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
42 P. 123, 12 Wash. 677, 1895 Wash. LEXIS 240, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-german-american-safe-deposit-savings-bank-v-superior-court-wash-1895.