Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/676

 aOGEBS V. BBia PSSEO. 669 �tliat of one "witnôss to signatures to certain exhibits, and that of said Loring to the circumstances attending an alleged demand of possession, and to some other points of compara- tively little importance, �A detailed statement of ail the facts shown and made a sub- ject of elaborate argument seems not necessary. Of these the counsel and parties are already fuUy informed, and that any other person than they can care to be aoquainted with them may well be questioned. My sole aim will be to state, as briefly as may be, the questions raised and discussed at the hearing, with my rulings or conclusions in regard to them. �1. The evidence shows that at the filing of the libel and the seizure of the vessel, on the twenty-eighth of May, the several libellants owned in the aggregate eighteen thirty-sec- onds of the brig; that afterwards, on the tenth day of June, (the monition not being returnable until the fourteenth,) one of the libellants, George G. Mitchell, sold and conveyed his two thirty-seconds to Olive A. Loring, wife of said Frederick B. ; and that afterwards, on the thirtieth of June, one of thjB libellants purchased one thirty-second of Julia, A. Thorpe, and thus increased the number of libellants' shares to seventeen thirty-seconds — a majority. �And in view of this state of facts it was moved on behalf of the libellants, at the call of the cause for hearing, that the libel be amended and made to harmonize with these facts ; the learned counsel for the libellees contending, in opposition, that inasmuch as from the tenth to the thirtieth of June the libellants' shares were but sixteen thirty-seconds, — not a majority, — their libel should be dismissed, their after pur- chase of one thirty-second being irtegular and nugatory so far as this suit is concerned. �The determination of this motion was reserved until the close of the hearing, when the parties were heard upon it. And now, after hearing upon ail the points raised in tho cause, I am constrained to overrule the objection of the libellees and to grant the motion to amend. �In this case both parties seem to have aoted upon tho assumption that the purchases and transfers of shares, pend- ����