Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/472

460 equity; and, in case the petition shall be dismissed, the debtor may recover like costs from the petitioner."

The register, to whom this application was referred, has reported in favor of the allowance of $460 attorneys' fees paid by the petitioning creditors, and $3,116.87 attorneys' fees incurred but not yet paid. The fees, as fixed by the register, are not unreasonable in amount, and, under the peculiar circumstances of the case, there are equitable rea- sons which would incline me to favor their allowance, could I see that I had any discretionary power to make the order recommended by the register. But, whatever may have been the earlier practice, the general orders in bankruptcy, as amended by the supreme court on April 12, 1875, in my judgment, cut up by the roots all allowances of fees to the attorneys of the petitioning creditors other than the docket fee of $20 taxable to the prevailing party in a suit in equity.

General order No. 30 contains this clause:

"No allowance shall be made against the estate of a bankrupt for fees of attorneys, solicitors,, or counsel, except when necessarily employed by the assignee, when the same may be allowed as a disbursement."

General order No. 30 and order No. 31 must be read to- gether, and the result is, as I apprehend them, that the court is forbidden to make any allowance for the fees of the attor- neys of the petitioning creditors beyond the $20 taxable costs allowed by law in an equity suit.

Says Blumenstiel, commenting on general order No. 25, (L. & P. in Bankruptcy, 375 :)

"The effect of this rule is also to prevent any charge being made on behalf of attorneys who are not employed by the assignee himself; so that solicitors acting on behalf of particular creditors, and who by their labor may benefit, the estate, cannot claim or be awarded any compensa- tion therefor out of the estate, but must look to the parties who employed them for their pay. Thus allowances to attorneys of petitioning cred- itors for having the debtor adjudged a bankrupt, are, by virtue of this rule, abolished," except (he adds) the taxable docket fee of $20, allowable under general order No. 31.

In Hauenstien v. Lynham, 100 U. S. 483, the supreme court say: "It is a settled rule in this court never to allow counsel on either side to be paid out of the fund in dispute." Id. 491. In the spirit of this rule, and to guard against abuses which