Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 4.djvu/115

99 HARVARD LAW REVIEW. VOL. IV. OCTOBER 15. 1890. No. 3. A BRIEF SURVEY OF EQUITY JURISDICTION.^ VI. Creditors' Bills. TT was stated in a former article ^ that there are three important •*■ classes of bills in equity which are founded upon contracts or obligations, and yet are not called bills for specific performance ; namely, bills for an account, bills of equitable assumpsit, and creditors' bills. The first and second of these have already been treated of, and it is now proposed to treat of the third. A creditor's bill is a bill filed by a creditor of a deceased debtor against the personal or the real representative, or against the personal and the real representatives, of the latter, to compel payment of the debt.'^ The jurisdiction of equity over such bills depends entirely upon the single fact of the debtor's death ; for against a living debtor, as such, equity never* has jurisdiction, while against the representatives of a deceased, debtor equity always has jurisdiction {i.e,^ in England). What is there then in 1 Continued from Vol. 3, p. 262. 2 Vol. 2, p. 242. many) of our States, the term ** creditor's bill " is commonly applied to a very different kind of bill from that which is the subject of the present article ; namely, a bill filed by a judgment creditor, whose execution, issued upon the judgment, has been returned un- satisfied, in whole or in part, to obtain satisfaction of the judgment out of assets of the judgment debtor which cannot be taken upon execution. It will be found convenient to distinguish these two classes of bills from each other, by calling the latter "judgment creditors' bills."
 * It is scarcely necessary to remind the intelligent reader that, in some (perhaps