Shaw v. Railroad Company Same

These cases present the following facts:--

By an act approved Feb. 9, 1853 (10 Stat. 155), Congress granted lands to the State of Arkansas to aid in building a railroad. Power was given the State to sell them only as the road was completed in sections of twenty miles each. If the road was not finished in a specified time, all lands not sold were to revert to the United States. A part of the lands thus donated by Congress were granted by the State to the Little Rock and Fort Smith Railroad Company.

On the 22d of December, 1869, the railroad company executed a mortgage on its railroad, completed and to be completed, to Henry W. Paine and Samuel T. Dana, as trustees, to secure an issue of bonds amounting in the aggregate to $3,500,000, payable Jan. 1, 1890, with interest semi-annually at six per cent per annum, and on the 20th of June, 1870, it executed another mortgage on its land-grant, earned and to be earned, to Paine, Dana, and William B. Stevens, to secure another issue of bonds for $5,000,000, payable April 1, 1900, with interest semi-annually at seven per cent per annum. Each of the mortgages contained this clause:--

'In case default shall be made in the payment of any halfyear's interest on any of the said bonds, at the time and in the manner in the coupon issued therewith provided, the said coupons having been presented and the payment of the interest therein specified having been demanded, and such default shall continue for the period of three months after said coupons shall have become due, and been demanded as aforesaid, then and thereupon the principal of all the said bonds shall, at the election of the trustees, become immediately due and payable.'

On the 12th of May, 1874, all the bonds provided for in both these mortgages had been put out and one hundred miles of the road built. About sixty miles remained to be completed, and the company was without funds or credit. All interest on the bonds falling due Jan. 1, 1871, and thereafter, was in arrear and unpaid. Thereupon Paine, a citizen of Massachusetts, at that time the only trustee of the mortgage of the railroad, and Paine, Stevens, and Charles W. Huntington, all citizens of Massachusetts, then the trustees of the land-grant mortgage, commenced suits in the Circuit Court of the United States for the Eastern District of Arkansas to foreclose their respective mortgages. In each of the bills the necessary averments of fact were made to entitle the parties to a decree of sale, and the trustees elected to treat the principal of the bonds as due. All the necessary defendants, including certain judgment creditors, were made, and there was nothing at that time in the citizenship of the parties to interfere with the jurisdiction of the court. The first of these cases is the suit upon the railroad mortgage, and the second that on the land grant. Afterwards changes in the trustees were made, so that Charles W. Huntington and Samuel H. Gookin represented the railroad mortgage, and Huntington, Gookin, and Samuel Atkins the land grant. The proper substitutions were made on the record, the new trustees all being citizens of Massachusetts.

Subsequently, on the 3d of October, 1874, an amendment was made to the bill for the foreclosure of the railroad mortgage, by which Atkins, one of the trustees of the land-grant mortgage, and other persons, citizens of Massachusetts, were brought in as defendants to that suit. The object of this amendment was to obtain the appointment of a receiver of the property with a view to raising money on receiver's certificates to complete the road and save the unearned land grant. No such appointment was made, however, and nothing was done under the amendment. On the 6th of November, a decree was entered in each of the cases, finding that the mortgage sued on was a valid and subsisting lien on the mortgaged property; that the whole amount of the bonds in each case had been issued, and, with the interest thereon, was due and unpaid; and ordering the mortgaged property to be sold unless the debt, principal and interest, was paid on or before the 10th of December than next. Provision was also made in each case for a distribution of the proceeds of the sales among the bondholders.

After this decree was rendered, a public meeting of the holders of both classes of bonds was called in Boston on full notice, and, as the result of that meeting, George O. Shattuck, Francis M. Weld, and George Ripley were appointed by parties representing in the aggregate $6,097,000 of the bonds, to purchase the mortgaged property for the benefit of the bondholders. They accordingly appeared at the sale, and became the purchasers of the railroad for $50,000, and the land grant for the same amount. The sale was duly reported to the court on the 19th of December, when the purchasers appeared and declared in open court, and desired to have it recorded, that it was their intention to organize a corporation under the laws of Arkansas, to own, hold, and manage the property bought at the sales, and that the holder of any of the bonds secured by either mortgage might, within sixty days from the time of the organization of the corporation, transfer to it his bonds and his right to the proceeds of the sale, and become entitled to his proportional interest in the stock of the new corporation upon the same terms and stipulations as any other holder of the bonds; but this was not to prevent the new corporation from requiring from any and all bondholders the payment of his proportion of the expenses attending the sales and purchases, and such other sums not exceeding five per cent of the principal of the bonds as it might deem for its interests to require as a condition on which the stock should be delivered, provided that the same requirement should be made of all the other holders of bonds, and provided further, that this stipulation should not limit the power of the purchasers to organize the corporation without notice, or of the corporation so organized to mortgage its property, or to reserve for its own use an amount of its capital stock, not exceeding ten per cent thereof. At the same time, the several trustees appeared in court and consented to a confirmation of the sales upon the agreement that the stipulations of the purchasers thus given be embodied in the decrees approving and confirming the sales. Thereupon appropriate orders of confirmation containing the required stipulations were entered, and the proper conveyances made. In the order confirming the sale under the land-grant mortgage, it was provided that the new corporation should, as part of the consideration for the conveyance, compromise or pay such claims against the old company as Huntington, Ripley, and Henry A. Whitney might within one year approve, and upon such terms and in such manner as they should prescribe.

On the 22d of February, 1875, Charles H. Richardson, Frank Shaw, and David S. Greenough, of Boston, representing themselves to be holders of a large amount of the bonds, filed their petition in court, asking that the decree of confirmation might be modified by striking out the clause requiring payment of the claims against the railroad company, and that the provisions of the decrees relating to the exchange of bonds for stock in the new corporation might be extended until the question of modification should be decided. As one of the grounds of this application, it was alleged that Weld and Atkins were creditors of the railroad company. This petition was answered by the several trustees explaining the facts. On the 13th of April, the time for exchanging bonds for stock in the new corporation was extended for sixty days, and the order for the payment of claims against the railroad company so modified as to make the approval of a claim by the court necessary before it could be paid, and providing for notice to Richardson, Greenough, and Shaw whenever a claim was presented for allowance.

On the 6th of July, 1875, Greenough, as owner of $58,000 of the bonds, and Shaw, as owner of $11,000, filed in the Circuit Court, in each of the cases, what is denominated a bill of review, in which they ask that the decrees be reviewed and reversed, and they placed in the same situation they would have been if the decrees had not been rendered. The errors complained of relate to the sufficiency of the allegations in the original bills; the confirmation of the sales, by the consent of the trustees, upon the terms stipulated for; a want of jurisdiction in the court, as the complainants and many of the defendants were citizens of the same State; and the rendition of a decree against the railroad company, without service of subpoena, after filing the amended bill. It was also alleged that Gookin and Atkins, trustees of the mortgages, were holders of bonds secured by the respective trusts. Demurrers to both bills were filed, which the court below sustained, and dismissed the suits. Shaw and Greenough thereupon appealed.

Mr. B. C. Brown, for the appellants, cited Clearwater v. Meredith, 1 Wall. 25; Vose v. Bronson, 6 id. 452; Jackson v. Ludeling, 21 id. 616; Thomas v. Brockenborough, 10 Wheat. 146.

Mr. C. W. Huntington, contra, cited Whiting v. Bank of the United States, 13 Pet. 6-15; Crawshay v. Soutter et al., 6 Wall. 739; Galveston Railroad v. Cowdrey, 11 id. 459; Twin Lick Oil Co. v. Marbury, 91 U.S. 587; Kerrison, Assignee, v. Stewart et al., 93 id. 155; Buffington v. Harvey, 95 id. 99; Sage v. Central Railroad Co., 99 id. 334; West et als. v. Davis, 4 McLean, 241; Smith v. Chicago & Northwestern Railroad Co., 18 Wis. 17; Carpenter v. Catlin, 44 Barb. (N. Y.) 75; Hill. Trustees, 152, note and cases cited.

MR. CHIEF JUSTICE WAITE, after stating the facts, delivered the opinion of the court.