Superior Oil Co. v. Baltar

160 So. 626, 181 La. 908, 1935 La. LEXIS 1546
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedMarch 4, 1935
DocketNo. 32836.
StatusPublished
Cited by11 cases

This text of 160 So. 626 (Superior Oil Co. v. Baltar) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Superior Oil Co. v. Baltar, 160 So. 626, 181 La. 908, 1935 La. LEXIS 1546 (La. 1935).

Opinion

ROGERS, Justice.

William W. Baltar, a resident'of Mississippi, died intestate on July 20, 1928, leaving property both in Mississippi and Louisiana.. The estate in Mississippi was administered in the chancery court of Harrison county, and in that proceeding the claim of the Superior Oil Company, a Mississippi corporation, was probated and allowed as provided by the laws of that state. As the estate in Mississippi was insolvent, the Superior Oil Company received a payment of 8477.73 on its total claim of 83,821.84,’ leaving a balance due of 83,344.11.

The estate of the decedent in Louisiana coixsisted of his undivided one-fifth interest in certain x-eal estate situated in the city of New Orleans; the other undivided four-fifths interest being owned by parties who are not involved in this litigation. On September 7, 1932, by a judgment of the civil district court for the parish of Orleans, the decedent’s six children, all of whom are residents of Mississippi, having accepted his succession unconditionally, were placed in possession of the decedent’s undivided one-fifth interest in the proportion of an undivided one-thirtieth interest to each of them in the real estate situated in New Orleans.

On October 17, 1932, the six children and heirs of the decedent organized a Louisiana corporation under the name of the Jacinto Realty Company, Inc., and on the same day each of the incorporators transferred to the newly created corporation, in payment for the shares of stock for which he or she had sub *912 scribed, his or her undivided one-thirtieth' interest in the New Orleans property which the incorporators had inherited from their deceased father. The charter of the Jacinto Realty Company, Inc., was filed for record in the mortgage office of the parish of Orleans on October 17,1932, and on the same day the act of sale by the Baltar heirs to the corporation was registered in the conveyance office of that parish.

On the following day, October 18, 1932, alleging that by accepting his succession the six children of William W. Baltar had become personally responsible for his debts, the Superior Oil Company, Inc., brought suit against them in the civil district court for the parish of Orleans, to recover $3,344.11, which was the balance due on its claim against William W. Baltar, and, on the allegation that the defendants were nonresidents, plaintiff asked for the attachment of the New Orleans property which defendants had inherited from their father. Two days later, October 20, 1932, having learned of the organization of the Jacinto Realty Company, Inc., and the transfer to the corporation of the property which the Baltar heirs owned in New Orleans, plaintiff filed a supplemental petition in which it prayed for an attachment of the property of the Jacinto Realty Company, Inc., and for a judgment in sólido against that company and the Baltar heirs.

The Jacinto Realty Company, Inc., excepted to plaintiff’s petition as disclosing no- cause of action, and the curator ad hoc appointed to represent the absent defendants excepted to the jurisdiction of the court ratione personae. Both exceptions were maintained by the trial judge, and plaintiff’s suit was dismissed. From this judgment plaintiff has appealed.

There can be no dispute with the legal proposition that the assets of the succession of William W. Baltar were the common pledge of the decedent’s creditors (Civ. Code, arts. 1968, 1969, 3183), nor with the proposition that, by unconditionally accepting the succession and taking possession of its assets, the Baltar heirs became personally ‘bound, each for his or-her virile share, for the debt due by their father to plaintiff (Civ. Code, arts. 1425, 1427).

The gravamen of plaintiff’s complaint, as disclosed by the allegations of the petition, is that the acts of the Baltar heirs were done with the intent of depriving plaintiff of its eventual rights on the property of its debtor. Plaintiff specifically alleges that the Baltar heirs had knowledge of its claim against the succession of their father, of the attempts made to amicably settle the claim, and of the suit which was to follow in default of such settlement; that they organized the Jacinto Realty Company, Inc., the capital stock of which was divided equally among them, and transferred to that corporation all the property which they had inherited from their father, for the purpose of avoiding the consequences of plaintiff’s suit and of making impossible of execution any judgment which plaintiff might obtain therein; that the Jacinto Realty Company, Inc., merely succeeded to the rights of ownership enjoyed by the Baltar heirs in the property; and that under the law the corporation thereby assumed the debt due to plaintiff by its incorporators and became liable in solido with them for its payment.

*914 The case as presented under the allegations of the petition falls within the doctrine announced hy this court in Taylor Co. v. Gulf Land & Lumber Co., 119 La. 426, 44 So. 187, and Wolff v. Shreveport Gas, E. L. & P. Co., 138 La. 743, 70 So. 789, 794, L. R. A. 1916D, 1138, which was followed by the Court of Appeal for the parish of Orleans in Wilson v. Lagasse, 12 La. App. 704, 127 So. 17.

In Taylor Co. v. Gulf Land & Lumber Co., it was held that the rights of creditors could not be prejudiced by the formation of a new corporation and the transfer to it of the assets of an old corporation in consideration of the issue of the stock of the new company to the shareholders of the old company.

In Wolff v. Shreveport Gas, E. L. & P. Co., this court, in announcing the same doctrine, said:

“According to the consensus of judicial opinion in this country, a newly organized corporation is liable for the debts of an old one, to the business and property of which it has succeeded, where it is shown that the succession was the result of a transaction entered into in fraud of the creditors of the old corporation, or that the circumstances attending the creation of the new, and its succession to the business and property of the old, were of such a character as to warrant the finding that the new, is merely a continuation of the old, corporation. The courts are also agreed * * * that the properties of a corporation constitute a trust fund for the payment of its debts; and that, where there has been a misappropriation of such funds, or (according to the better opinion, as we think) the corporation has been devested thereof by consolidation, merger, reorganization, or ‘reincarnation,’ not only may the fund be followed, by the aid of equity, for the benefit of the creditor, but he may recover, in an action at law, against the corppration which has taken over such fund, with the business of his debtor.
“There is not the same concurrence of opinion upon the question whether, or under what circumstance, the mere absorption by one corporation of the property and business of another operates as a merger of such other corporation, or subjects the property so absorbed to the claims of its creditors, or the absorbing corporation to liability for such claims.

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Bluebook (online)
160 So. 626, 181 La. 908, 1935 La. LEXIS 1546, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/superior-oil-co-v-baltar-la-1935.