Cole v. Millerton Iron Co. , 133 N.Y. 164 ( 1892 )

The plaintiff is a creditor of the National Mining Company, a coporation formed and existing under the laws of this state. He commenced an action to recover damages done to his property by the wrongful act of the corporation, serving the summons in October, 1887, and recovering judgment in July of the next year. During the pendency of the action all the property and assets of the debtor corporation were transferred to the Millerton Iron Company, also a domestic corporation, upon a nominal consideration, except an assumption by the vendee of the debts of the vendor, and thereupon the former executed a mortgage to the Mercantile Trust Company covering all its property, including that acquired from the National Mining Company. When the plaintiff obtained his judgment nothing remained upon which it was a lien and his execution was returned unsatisfied. He then began this action, in which he assailed the transfers made, with a view of subjecting the property of the debtor corporation to the satisfaction of his debt. Upon the trial his complaint was dismissed, but the General Term reversed the judgment and ordered a new trial. From that order the Trust Co. alone appeals and has given the usual stipulation for judgment absolute.

The trial court has refused to find that the National Company was insolvent at the date of its transfer, but did find that such transfer suspended and terminated the regular business of the grantor, and was made and accepted with that purpose and intention. The practical effect was to dissolve the grantor corporation and subject its charter to forfeiture at the hands of the state, for it voluntarily stripped itself of all its property and assets and became incapable, and intended to be and remain incapable of performing its corporate duties. Such a transfer, which involves the destruction of the corporation and an abandonment of the purposes of its organization, is illegal as against creditors whose rights are thereby sacrificed and their remedies destroyed. The transfer was illegal also because made in contemplation of insolvency. Those who accomplished it knew that its necessary and inevitable effect would be to make the corporation unable to pay its debts and must be held to have intended that consequence of their acts. I do not agree to that reading of the statute which limits its prohibition to cases in which payment of some note or obligation has been previously refused. An interpretation so narrow would seriously maim and distort the obvious purpose of the statute and make a transfer, in contemplation of insolvency, good the day before a note matured and bad the day after. As against the creditor the transfer to the Millerton Company was illegal and in fraud of his rights. The assets of a corporation are a trust fund for the payment of its debts upon which the creditors have an equitable lien both as against the stockholders and all transferees, except those purchasing in good faith and for value. (Bartlett v.Drew, 57 N.Y. 587; Brum v. Ins. Co., 16 Fed. Rep. 143; Morawetz on Corporations, § 791.) The Millerton Co. was not such a purchaser. It parted with nothing. It knew and participated in the illegal purpose to destroy the National Company, to make it utterly insolvent, and to deprive its creditors of the trust fund upon which they had a right to rely, and so they were at liberty to set aside the transfer so far as it barred their remedy, and to enforce their equitable lien upon the property in the hands of the transferee.

It is not a sufficient answer to say that the transfer was rather formal than real, because before its occurrence the Millerton Co., having the same stockholders and officers, managed and conducted the business of the National Company before the transfer, as well as after, and that what occurred was a practical consolidation. Companies may consolidate, but under the permission and safe-guards of the statute, all of which were disregarded, and what is called the formal transaction cuts off and destroys the right of the creditor, and is being used for that exact purpose.

Neither is it an answer to say that the creditor is not harmed by a change of the party liable to pay, unless there be some disproportion in the assets. He cannot be forced to change his debtor against his will, and it appears in the proof that the transfer to the Millerton Company was followed by a mortgage sweeping in to its lien and peril the very property transferred.

We are satisfied, therefore, that the plaintiff was entitled to judgment of sequestration and for a receiver, and so the order of the General Term was right. The judgment obtained by Chapman is not a bar to the remedy. It is not relied upon for that purpose, and the appointment of the receiver was without notice to the attorney-general, as the law required. (Laws of 1883, chap. 378.) In the present case the plaintiff must give such notice when he applies for the appointment.

The rights of the mortgagee, who is the present appellant, need not now be accurately determined. Whether that mortgage was valid at all for want of proper consents, or whether any of the bondholders have acquired equities superior to those of the plaintiff, may or may not become questions in the future. Enough appears to show that some of them do not stand in the attitude ofbona fide creditors, and that the remedies of all may be confined to the property of the Millerton Company not derived from the National, until at least the former is exhausted. Those questions, however, may be left to the developments consequent upon further proceedings.

The order of the General Term should be affirmed and judgment absolute for the plaintiff be rendered upon the stipulation, with costs.

All concur.

Order affirmed and judgment accordingly.