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110 Ala. 180

Metcalf v. Arnold

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided November 15, 1895

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1895-11-15

Heard before the Hon. Jeke N. Williams. Tin bill in this case was filed by the appellees, who were judgment creditors, for the benefit of themselves and all other creditors of the Metcalf Drug Company, who might desire to come in and make themselves parties.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1895-11-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 12 later decisions — most recently June 1989

1 federal appellate · 11 state decisions

301895190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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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BRICKELL, O'. J.

¶1The demurrer was properly overruled. The bill is not, as is supposed by several of the causes of demurrer, a bill assailing collaterally the incorporation of the Metcalf Drug Company and seeking a forfeiture of its charter. It is a bill by judgment creditors , seeking the aid of a court of equity to remove obstacles and hindrances to the enforcement of their judgments, which the judgment debtors have fraudulently interposed. Whatever may be the character of the obstacle or hindrance; whatever may be the scheme or device to which the debtor resorts, it lies within the province of a court of equity to remove it. The formation of a corporation, investing it with the legal title to all the property and rights of property of the judgment debtors, and parcelling out the stock of the corporation to the debtors and their wives, may be a new device for hindering, delaying and defrauding creditors. The novelty of the device is not of consequence; the fraud of *185its conception and consummation vitiates it, as fraud vitiates all transactions tainted with it. The bill does pray that the formation of the corporation be deemed fraudulent and void as to the complainants. Such a decree would be proper in granting to the complainants the full measure of relief to which they are entitled, if the allegations of the bill be true. But it would not work a forfeiture of the charter, or a dissolution of the corporation; it would simply be ancillary to the divestiture of the title to the property, liable to the debts of the complainants, with which it had been invested by the judgment debtors.

¶2Let the decree of the chancellor be affirmed*

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