Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/713

 VETTERLEIN V. BaRNES. 701 �partners the liquidation of the affaire of the firm ; and this seema to be a personal right which the solvent partner oan- not transfer. Frazer v.Kerskaw, 2 K. & J. 496. �The assets of these several prior firms, so far as they had been kept separate and distinct, are admitted by the bill to have corne to these bankrupts, and to have been by tbem, as liquidators, partly administered when they became bankrupt. The right of the plaintifif to assume their administration and liquidation, if he had such right, then at once accrued to the plaintiff against the bankrupts upon their failure, and before the petition in bankruptcy was filed. The letters of the plaintiff's agent ia 1873, above recited, show very plainly that the plaintiff then understood and knew that the defend- ant had taken possession of ail such assets, and was claiming to administer them as belonging to the estate of the bank- rupts, and was reducing them to money. By the letter of twenty-seventh of May, 1873, he demanded an account and settlement as to his iuterest in the firms of Th. H. Vetterlein & Sons and Vetterlein & Co., and threatened a suit if his demand was not complied with. Tbere can be no doubt from the evidence that as to ail assets of these prior firms of which the assignee took possession, and of which he made any collections, his claim was adverse to that of this plain- tiff, as a solvent partner seeking to recover them for himself, in order to liquidate which is the claim now made, although the claim made by the letters was not a claim for the pos- session of the assets in order to liquidate, but for an account and payment, out of the assets so collected, of the plaintiff's alleged interest or balance of unpaid profits in these several firms. It is noticeable, however, that in these letters of 1873 there is no reference to any claim of the plaintiff as partner in the firm of Th. H. & B. Vetterlein & Co., which now con- stitutes the larger part of his present claim. Not until the letter of June 1, 1878, was any claim made of an interest in that firm, and not until the filing of the amended bill in this suit — December, 1879 — was this claim of a right to liqui- date the assets of these prior firms made. �Whatever may have been the right of the plaintiff as a ��� �