Northy v. Field, 2 Esp. 613..... 343 | Puffer, 2 N. B. R. 17..

UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT.-DECEMBER TERM, 1870. [Appeal from the circuit court of the United States for the district of

Louisiana.]

Where a bank went into liquidation in accordance with the provisions of a State law in 1868, pursuant to the decree forfeiting its charter, and commissioners were appointed to administer the affairs of the bank, and they accepted the trust, giving the necessary bonds, which trust they continued to fulfill for a year, when an involuntary petition for the adjudication of the bank and the commissioners bankrupt was filed in the United States district court of the district, alleging fraudulent preferences in payments by the commissioners, and also praying that a provisional warrant might issue to take possession of the assets of the bank then in the hands of the commissioners. A decree in bankruptcy was made, and injunctions granted against the commissioners. The commissioners, within ten days of the decree, filed a petition for the review by the circuit court of the decree and order of the district court, and the circuit court affirmed the decree, &c., of the district court.

Application for an appeal to the United States supreme court being immediately made, was refused by the circuit judge; but more than ten days after the decree of the circuit court an appeal was allowed by an associate justice of the United States supreme court.

Held, that decrees in equity, in order that they may be re-examined in this court, must be final decrees, rendered in term time, as contradistinguished from mere interlocutory decrees or orders, which may be entered at chambers, or, if entered in court, are still subject to revision at the final hearing. If this rule were not followed in allowing appeals to the United States supreme court, every question arising in the courts may be indefinitely protracted, and the benificent purposes of the bankrupt act be thereby defeated, Appeal dismissed for want of jurisdiction.

MORGAN, et al., v. THORNHILL, et. al.

CLIFFORD, J.-Exclusive original jurisdiction, in all matters and proceedings in bankruptcy, is conferred by the acts of Congress upon the district courts, except that in case of a vacancy in the office of a district judge, or in case the district judge shall,from sickness, absence or other disability, be unable

VOL. V.-I.

Morgan et al. v. Thornhill, et. al.

to act, in which event the circuit judge may make all necessary rules and orders preparatory to the final hearing, and cause the same to be entered or issued, as the case may require, by the clerk of the district court. 14 Stat. at Large, 517; 16 ib. 174.

Certain occurrences, during the late civil war, so crippled the resources of the bank of Louisiana that the directors necame unable to comply with the requisitions of their charer. Proceedings were accordingly instituted by the attorney general of the state, under the act "to provide for the liquidation of banks," in the proper court of the state, to forfeit the charter of the bank, and on the 20th of May, 1868, a decree was entered in the case that the charter of the bank be declared forfeited, and that its affairs be liquidated according to law.

Pursuant to that decree the appellants were appointed commissioners for that purpose, and the record shows that they accepted the trust, that they took the required oaths, that they gave the necessary bonds, that they entered upon the discharge of their duties, and that they continued to administer the affairs of the bank until the 20th of May of the following year, when the appellees, or the first three named, filed a petition in the district court for that district, praying that the bank and the said commissioners, in their character as such, might be declared a bankrupt and that a warrant might issue to take possession of the estate of the bank in the hands of the commissioners.

They represented in their petition that the bank and the commissioners had each, within six months preceding the date of the petition, committed an act of bankruptcy, that the corporation had for a long time suspended payment of its commercial paper, and that the commissioners had, within the same period, made certain payments, and transferred certain assets of the bank in payment of its debts, with intent to give a preference to certain creditors of the bank. Special reference to the supplemental petition is unnecessary, as the representations of the petition are substantially the same, and the two were heard together in the court below.

Morgan et al. v. Thornhill et al.

Three several injunctions were granted in the case by the district judge sitting in bankruptcy, and on the 11th of January, 1870; the district court entered a decree that the bank was a bankrupt. Within ten days from the date of the decree a petition for a review of those orders and decrees was filed by the commissioners in the circuit court, under the second section of the bankrupt act, and the circuit court having first heard the parties, on the 2d of March, 1870, entered a decree affirming the orders and decrees of the district court. Application was immediately made by the commissioners for an appeal to this court, which was refused by the circuit judge, but it was ultimately granted by one of the associate justices of this court, more than ten days, however, subsequent to the date of the decree of the circuit court.

Seasonable application for the appeal having been made and a sufficient bond tendered, the appellants contended, and still contend, that the appeal as subsequently allowed operated as a supersedeas from the date of the first application. Different views, however, were entertained by the district judge, and on the 29th of March, 1870, he passed an order directing the marshal to resume possession of all such portion of the assets of the bank as he had surrendered to the commissioners.

Dissatisfied with that order the commissioners applied to the associate justice of this court assigned to that circuit to vacate that order and to enforce the supersedeas supposed to have been created by the appeal as allowed in pursuance of the last application. His opinion was that the appeal, as allowed, related back to the date of the original application for the same to the circuit judge, and that it operated, as a supersedeas, the same as it would have done if it had been granted within ten days from the date of the decree dismissing the petition for a review and affirming the decree adjudging the corporation a bankrupt.

Influenced by those views he made a decree that all the orders in the cause subsequent to the 21st of January, 1870, should be vacated and annulled, leaving the injunction