Wall & Beaver Street Corporation v. Munson Line

58 F. Supp. 101, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1672
CourtDistrict Court, D. Maryland
DecidedJuly 21, 1943
Docket1954
StatusPublished
Cited by7 cases

This text of 58 F. Supp. 101 (Wall & Beaver Street Corporation v. Munson Line) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering District Court, D. Maryland primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Wall & Beaver Street Corporation v. Munson Line, 58 F. Supp. 101, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1672 (D. Md. 1943).

Opinion

CHESNUT, District Judge.

On the defendant’s motion to dismiss the complaint in the above case, after hearing counsel and study of the briefs submitted, I have reached the conclusion that the motion must be granted. I will state the principal reasons therefor in this opinion.

The general nature of the case is a bill in equity by three minority junior stockholders to obtain a complete liquidation of the defendant corporation and the division pro rata of the assets among its various stockholders according to their rights and equities, or “in the alternative that this court will require the defendant to reduce the number of shares of stock outstanding by the number of shares of stock held by the plaintiffs, and pay to the plaintiffs the share of their assets in accordance with their rights and equities.”' The only defendant is the Maryland corporation. Ordinarily a court of equity does not have, in the absence of a statute, the power to liquidate a corporation which, as in the instant case, is entirely solvent, or to require the corporation to redeem a portion of its stock, in the absence of charter or statutory power therefor. This is the well established substantive Maryland law. The question therefore on the motion to dismiss is whether the allegations of' the complaint state such an extraordinary case as justifies prima facie the relief requested.

In general the substance of the complaint is that it alleges that the president of the corporation, as the owner of a majority of the first preferred stock, with the aid of proxies from other stockholders, is using the controlling power in the affairs of the corporation thus acquired for personal and selfish purposes to the alleged detriment of *103 the plaintiffs who are holders of about 15% in amount of a junior preferred stock.

Attention is called to rule 8(a) of the new Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c, which provides that “A pleading which sets forth a claim for relief, whether an original claim, counterclaim, cross-claim, or third-party claim, shall contain (1) a short and plain statement of the grounds upon which the court’s jurisdiction depends * * *; (2) a short and plain statement of the claim showing that the pleader is entitled to relief, and (3) a demand for judgment for the relief to which he deems himself entitled.” And rule 9(b) provides: “in all averments of fraud or mistake, the circumstances constituting fraud or mistake shall be stated with particularity.” The complaint in this case contains 15 closely typewritten pages and numerous charges of fraud by the said president of the corporation, but mostly without particularity of statement with regard to the latter that is required by the rule. Many of the averments of fact in the complaint, while tending generally to show selfish mismanagement by the president of the corporation, are really irrelevant to the particular relief that is asked. The result is that on reading the lengthy complaint it is difficult to separate the relevant from the irrelevant averments. This failure to comply with the rules would perhaps justify the dismissal of the complaint in its present form, but with permission for an amendment to comply with the rules, if the substance of the relevant allegations were sufficient prima facie to justify the relief asked.

In ruling on the motion it is also to be borne in mind that if in substance the complaint states a case justifying any relief within the power of the court, the motion should be overruled. It is therefore necessary to analyze the averments of the complaint, but they must be read in connection with the background affecting the history of the defendant as shown in the plan of reorganization of its predecessor and the certificate of incorporation of the present corporate defendant. Both of these documents are annexed to the complaint and are complex legal documents requiring careful study and analysis in order to determine whether the averments of fact in the complaint justify the relief asked.

It appears from the plan of bankruptcy reorganization (under section 77B, 11 U.S.C.A. § 207) that the corporate predecessor was the Munson Steamship Line, incorporated under the laws of New York. For many years it had been engaged in a general steamship cargo carrying business. It owned about nine steamships, but for some years prior to 1934 its business had been financially unsuccessful and in that year it applied for reorganization in the District Court for the Southern District of New York. The reorganization plan states the very complicated legal and financial situation affecting the defendant and the numerous conflicting liens and obligations affecting fits property. The plan provided that a new corporation should be formed to be known as the Munson Line, Inc., and provided what its capitalization should be and on what basis its several classes of new stock should be issued to creditors of the old corporation. It is particularly to be noted that four classes of new stock were provided for, three of preferred and one of .common. All the new stock was to be without par value, but Class A stock was to be entitled to preferential dividends at the rate of $4 per year and on liquidation to receive $25 per share prior to subordinate classes of stock. Similarly Class B and Class C preferred stocks were entitled to their respective preferences in their order over the common stock. The plan contemplated the issuance of approximately 18.000 shares of Class A preferred stock, 2.000 shares of Class B preferred stock and 70.000 shares of Class C preferred stock and 70,000 shares of common stock.

For this case it is especially important to note with regard to Class A that “it will" not be redeemable by the Company” and “so long as any preferred stock Class A shall be outstanding, the Company shall not redeem or purchase any of its preferred stock ‘Class C’ or common stock unless the book value of the net assets (applicable to the stock of the new Company) remaining after such redemption or purchase shall be at least equal to $1,000,000.” And it was also provided that “so long as any preferred stock (Class B) shall be outstanding, the Company shall not redeem or purchase any of its preferred stock (Class C) or common stock”. Dividends on Class A stock were to be noncumulative for two years (until 1941). Thereafter upon default in any quarterly yearly dividend payable on Class A preferred stock “the hold *104 ers of this class, voting as a class, shall he entitled to elect 60% of the members of the board of directors;” and in that event the remaining members of the board were to be elected by the holders of preferred stock Class B and preferred stock Class C voting together as one class, the holders of common stock to have no vote in that case.

The new corporation was duly incorporated by certificate of incorporation under the laws of the State of Maryland, filed with and approved by the State Tax Commission of Maryland on February 4, 1939. It also is an elaborate document containing the provisions with respect to Class A and other stocks provided for in the plan of reorganization.

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306 A.2d 218 (Court of Appeals of Maryland, 1973)
Ryan v. Bethlehem Sparrows Point Shipyard, Inc.
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Munson Line, Inc. v. Green
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WALL & BEAVER STREET CORPORATION v. Munson Line
58 F. Supp. 109 (D. Maryland, 1944)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
58 F. Supp. 101, 1943 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 1672, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/wall-beaver-street-corporation-v-munson-line-mdd-1943.