Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 5.djvu/366

 354 FEDERAL BSPOBTEB. �protected, because the debt on which the judgment was recov- ered was a firm debt. The equities here mn with the statute lien, and not against it. The attaching of the lien effects the application of firm property to the payment of a firm debt, and neither the copartners inter sese nor other firm creditors are injured in their rights, legal or equitable, thereby. As between the petitioners and other firm creditors, the petition- ers are entitled to the advantage which their greater diligence gives them in obtaining a periected lien before the commence- ment of bankrnptcy proceedings. �Lastly, it i» objected that under the general assignment of the twenty-ninth of April the title to this real estate, or, at any rate, an equitable interest in it, passed to the assignee named therein, and that this deieats the lien of a judgment afterwards docketed. It is insisted, however, by the peti- tioners that the general assignment was void and inoperative for any purpose of vesting a title or an equitable interest under the law of New York. And I think this view is correct. The statute regulating general assignments for the benefit of creditors, (St. 1877, c. 466,) provides that every such assign- ment "shall be in writing, and shall be duly acknowledged before an officer authorized to take the acknowledgment of deeds." This, it seems to me, necessarily implies that the assignment, in case of a firm, shall be signed, executed, and acknowledged by ail the members of the firm as a deed of real estate is required to be executed and acknowledged, and that an assignment not so executed is inoperative. Two of the partners did not sign this instrument, nor was there any proof whatever of the authority of Seabury Lawrence, who purports to have signed it as attorney in fact for the firm, to sign it on their behalf, if, indeed, a signature in the firm name, with authority from them, would be equivalent to a signature in their names. This requirement of the act of 1877, that ail the partners should join in the assignment, was in accordance with the established rule of law as held in the state of New York before the passage of that act, that copartners have no authority as such to bind each other by a general assignment of the firm property to a trustee for ����