Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/16

 PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION. relations arising through the prosecution of a corporate enter- prise. By dismissing this fiction, a clearer view may be had of the actual human beings interested, whose rights may then be determined without unnecessary mystification. There will re- main the body corporate, an organized body of men, exercising, directly or through agents, certain authority in a certain manner ; there will remain the individual shareholders, the corporate officers and agents, the creditors of the corporation, and the public. To litigation arising from transactions respect- ing corporate interests there must be parties. The parties may be the corporation on the one hand, standing often as the representative of the rights of all persons in the corporate enterprise, and, on the other, some outsider, or the state, or some shareholder, officer, or creditor ; or the plaintiffs may be shareholders, the defendants officers, or the plaintiff a creditor, the defendant a shareholder. Suits may also be prosecuted in which names of shareholders or of creditors appear on both sides of the case. And the result of the suit will be affected by the position occupied by the parties towards the transaction oc- casioning the litigation. In view of these considerations, the arrangement adopted in this Treatise is thought suited to an accurate exposition of corporation law. H. O. Taylor. New York, May 1, 1884. X