Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/185

 178 FEDERAL REPORTBR. �one of very great importance, considering the sum involved in the controversy. The purpose- of the petition is no les3 than to set aside the sale of a ruilroad which is perhapa ■worth $20,000,000, or more; a road which has been reor- ganized since the purchase, with a new set of directors, a new set of stockholders, very largely and above ail, a new set of bond holders. The road was purchaaed under a decree of this court, the purchase was confirmed, and a new company organized, which has been in possession of the road over a year, and has issued, as I say, some $10,- 000,000 or $15,000,000 of new bonds, held ail over the world ; and now original bond holders in the old company, represent- ing $1,500,000, corne and ask that ail these prooeedings be set aside, and that we proceed de novo to sell the road. These petitioners were not parties to that suit in the sense in which they now seek to be made parties. The first thing that they" ask in the present proceeding is that they may be made parties. If they were parties at ail — as in some sense they were, and represented by their trustees in the prooeedings of foreclosure — they were not parties in such a sense as would enable them to control the litigation, or corne forward now as parties orig- inally engaged in the litigation; and they, therefore, seek, very properly, if they are to have any relief in this proceed- ing, to be made parties in the first instance. The first ques- tion that presents itself is whether they can be made parties. �Taking ail to be true that they say in their petition, the case stands that, during the prooeedings of foreclosure, these petitioners ought to bave been represented, and were legallyrep- resented, by the trustees, plaintiffs in the foreclosure suit. The foreclosure was manfuUy resisted by the corporation for three or four years. It was obvious that the mortgage ought to be foreclosed, and the road sold, as the interest had not been paid for years. The present applicants state that the road, at that time, was worth say $8,000,000. Fifteen million dollars of bonds were liens upon it, with whatever other claims there may bave been against it, besides the interest coupons, so that the road had a bonded debt of twice the amount these peti- tioners say it was then worth. It was, therefore, obvious ����