Yount-Lee Oil Co. v. Federal Crude Oil Co.

82 S.W.2d 987, 1935 Tex. App. LEXIS 509
CourtCourt of Appeals of Texas
DecidedApril 22, 1935
DocketNo. 2865.
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 82 S.W.2d 987 (Yount-Lee Oil Co. v. Federal Crude Oil Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Texas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Yount-Lee Oil Co. v. Federal Crude Oil Co., 82 S.W.2d 987, 1935 Tex. App. LEXIS 509 (Tex. Ct. App. 1935).

Opinion

COMBS, Justice.

This suit was filed in the Fifty-Eighth district court of Jefferson county on April 4, 1935, by Federal Crude Oil Company against Yount-Lee Oil Company, 'a corporation, and Stanolind Oil & Gas Company, a corporation, and Wright Morrow and Sam J. Hindman, individuals, on the following allegations: Federal Crude Oil Company had filed in the Sixtieth district court of Jefferson county the suit as reflected by the opinion of this court, Federal Crude Oil Co. v. Yount-Lee Oil Co., 73 S.W.(2d) 969; that judgment of the lower court against Federal Crude Oil *988 Company was affirmed by said opinion (a writ of error to our state Supreme Court against that judgment of affirmance was dismissed for want of jurisdiction), and “from an affirmance of that order the court of Civil Appeals, at Beaumont, your plaintiff has presented to the United States Supreme Court, in due and proper form, its petition for a writ of certiorari, which has been filed in said court and is now on the docket thereof, seeking by that process the jurisdiction of that tribunal upon the grounds set forth therein, a review and reversal of the adverse decisions against it in the Texas Courts, aforesaid, predicated among other grounds upon the denial to it of due process of law under the Fourteenth Amendment ■ of the Constitution of the United States.

“Thus and thereby the proceeding instituted by this plaintiff, now pending and undetermined, presents a case wherein in the event of its recovery, which the plaintiff herein asserts upon information and belief, will result in a judgment ultimately rendered against the said defendant, Yount-Lee Oil Company, for said sum of money, and the title and possession of said property. Thereby and in such event the said defendant will be condemned to pay as a corporation out of its assets and resources, said sum of money, all of which assets and resources, located in Jefferson, Calveston, Liberty, Hardin, Gregg and other counties of South and East Texas, and in part in Southwest Louisiana, constitute its sole resources and assets capable of responding to process of law for enforcement of such judgment, without which the corporation could not pay the same, leaving the plaintiff without recourse for its demands when adjudicated to it.

“These assets consist of oil properties, producing, transporting, storing and selling of crude oil, the business of said defendant being that of an oil producing corporation.”

We copy from the petition of Federal Crude Oil Company as follows, giving in detail the nature of its. cause of action and the relief prayed for:

“Your petitioner here avers upon information and belief that the assets of the said defendant, Yount-Lee Oil Company, are now threatened to be entirely dissipated and passed into the hands of the other defendants hereinbefore named, in accordance with the following prospective plan of procedure, the result of which, if unrestrained and permitted to be effectuated without adequate provision made for the protection of your plaintiff, in the-event of its recovery of its claims against said corporation, whereby the responsibility and liability for the adequate satisfaction of a judgment rendered in behalf of your plaintiff would be circumvented to-the point of a denial of satisfaction, even though judicial order should award the full relief which the plaintiff is now seeking, and which it verily believes and asserts it is here. entitled to receive and will receive in its suit.
“That plan, leading to that result, is in substance and effect as your plaintiff is-informed and believes, and here avers, as-follows:
“The defendants have gone into an agreement among themselves to carry out and effectuate the following plan and design, to-wit, the present stockholders of the Yount-Lee Oil Company have executed an option to sell their stock for a large sum of money, aggregating approximately sixty Millions -of Dollars, to the defendants, Morrow and Hindman, who in turn, conformable to the mutual agreement existing between the Stanolind Oil & Gas-Company and the Yount-Lee Oil Company,, and its stockholders, proposed a plan and agree as the successors in stock interest of the old stockholders of the old Yount-Lee Oil Company, and in control of the last named corporation, to transfer the-physical assests hereinbefore indicated and specifically shown by the sundry records of the respective counties and districts-where such assets are located, to the Stan-olind Oil & Gas Company, a foreign corporation, piece by piece, and item by item, by appropriate transfers and descriptions, whereby the last named corporation is to become the purchaser of these physical assets and properties of the Yount-Lee Oil Company, the said two individual defendants herein taking the funds so obtained for the sale of said physical assets and reimbursing the old stockholders, or those fiscal agencies through which the exercise of the option to buy that stock has been provided in the forms of loans, or otherwise, and thus and thereby by such roundabout and indirect method securing the stock of the Yount-Lee Oil Company from its old stockholders, and investing it ostensibly in the said Morrow and Hindr man, the New Stockholders. The effect of this arrangement is through this de *989 vious method of procedure to sell the assets of the oil Company to the Stanolind Oil & Gas Company, and to use the funds deraigned from the funds of such assets to acquire the stock of the Yount-Lee Oil Company from the old stockholders without the form and procedure of' dividends. The ultimate effect and purpose of such arrangement is to leave the Yount-Lee Oil Company as a corporation, which is the sole defendant charged with appropriating the plaintiff’s property and its monies, as aforesaid, without assets with which to respond a judgment in favor of the plaintiff against it. Moreover, the effect is also to leave its stockholders, to-wit, the said Morrow and Hindman, and such successors as they may have in that capacity, with certificates of stock in a corporation without substántial assets and without receiving any dividends and proceeds of such physical properties and assets of the corporation. In short, the effect is to create a shell, with no substantial substance, of the Yount-Lee Oil Company as a corporation, against which judicial process would be unavailing to secure and effectuate the satisfaction of a judgment such as is sought by the plaintiff, and such as the plaintiff expects to obtain in the course of its litigation hereinbefore stated.
“Moreover, through this device and plan, now agreed upon and in process of being consummated, unless the equitable relief herein sought protects your plaintiff in its rights, the assets of said corporation will pass into the hands of the said Stanolind Oil & Gas Company, and the fruits thereof, through the indirect methods hereinabove stated, will pass, not as dividends nor in the ordinary method provided for the tracing of assets through dividends into the hands of stockholders, but as the purchase price for the sale of the stock of the said Yount-Lee Oil Company’s present stockholders, which sale of stock will take the form of a conveyance thereof to what is in substance and effect, and in its substantial result, the dummy stockholders acting as intermediaries beyond the Yount-Lee Oil Company and its old stockholders to the Stanolind Oil & Gas Company.

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Bluebook (online)
82 S.W.2d 987, 1935 Tex. App. LEXIS 509, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/yount-lee-oil-co-v-federal-crude-oil-co-texapp-1935.