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1 F.R.D. 565

Taylor v. McKeever

U.S. District Court

Decided December 17, 1940

U.S. District Court · decided 1940-12-17

Relies on Bellavance v. Plastic-Craft Novelty Co. · 32 F. Supp. 321 - Williams v. Collier

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1940-12-17

How this case has been cited

Cited by 6 later decisions — most recently July 1985

1 federal appellate ·

4019401950196019701980decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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CAMPBELL, District Judge.

¶1This is a motion for an order directing that this action be tried by the Court without a Jury, and that it be removed from the Civil Jury Calendar and placed upon the Civil Non-Jury Calendar pursuant to Rule 39(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, 28 U.S.C.A. following section 723c, upon the ground that a right of trial by Jury does not exist under the constitution or statutes of the United States in this action.

¶2Rule 39(a), in so far as it is necessary, reads as follows: “(a) By Jury. When trial by jury has been demanded as provided in Rule 38, the action shall be designated upon the docket as a jury action. The trial of all issues so demanded shall be by jury, unless (2) the court upon motion or of its own initiative finds that a right of trial by jury of some or all of those issues does not exist under the Constitution or statutes of the United States.”

¶3The action at bar, if it is for an accounting, prior to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure going into effect, would have been placed on the Equity Calendar, and neither party would have had a right to a trial by jury under the Constitution or statutes of the United States. Williams v. Collier et al., D.C., 32 F.Supp. 321; Bellavance v. Plastic-Craft Novelty Co. et al., D.C., 30 F.Supp. 37.

¶4Issue was joined in this case on November 1st, 1940, and on November 7th, 1940, defendant demanded trial by Jury, and when plaintiff noticed the case for trial for the December Term, it was placed upon the Civil Jury Calendar, hence this motion.

¶5The allegations of the complaint are those which should properly be made in an action for an accounting, and the demand is for an accounting and Judgment for the sum found due.

¶6The defendant, as alleged in the complaint, stood in a fiduciary relationship to the plaintiff; she received stocks and bonds from plaintiff with full authority to sell or purchase as she deemed best for the benefit of the plaintiff, whom she guaranteed against loss.

¶7While plaintiff shows what stock and bonds she delivered to defendant, she cannot determine or allege what defendant sold or purchased, or what became of the stocks and bonds so delivered by plaintiff to defendant, which have not been returned, without an accounting.

¶8The exceptions to the denials in defendant’s answer seem to me to be admissions of the existence of the fiduciary relationship.

¶9The affirmative defenses in defendant’s answer do not tend to change the nature of the action.

¶10This is an action for an accounting, which has always been cognizable in equity.

¶11I entirely disagree with defendant’s contention that this is an action at law for breach of contract, or that if it be not, plaintiff must proceed at law by replevin or for conversion.

¶12The allegations of the complaint present much more than a mere characterization of an action for an accounting, they in fact allege facts sufficient, if sustained on the trial, to entitle the plaintiff to prevail in an action for an accounting, formerly cognizable in equity, and defendant is not *567entitled to a jury trial under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure.

¶13While it is true that under those rules there is but one form of civil action, they did not grant a right of trial by jury in a case where that right did not exist under the Constitution or statutes of the United States when those rules took effect.

¶14The motion is granted.

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