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3 Edw. Ch. 450

Tappen v. Gray

New York Court of Chancery

Decided January 21, 1841

New York Court of Chancery · decided 1841-01-21

Bill and demurrer. The bill showed that on the twenty-eighth day of April, in the year one thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven, the complainant, Christopher B. Tappen, was appointed by the then* Governor of the stare of New-York, with the consent of the senate, inspector of flour in the city of New-York; and was to hold the office, together with the fees, profits and advantages to the same belonging, for and during the term limited by the constitution and laws of the…

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1841-01-21

How this case has been cited

Cited by 4 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently May 1921

2 state decisions

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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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The Vice-Chancellor :

¶1The bill in this case presents a fitting cause for a court of equity to interfere by injunction on the principle of quia timet owing to the defendant’s insolvency and the consequent danger to the fees and emoluments of the office, while the right thereto is in dispute and until the question of such right can be determined by .the supreme court upon the quo warranto.

¶2This court may not have jurisdiction to determine that question, so as to render a judgment or decree of ouster of the office. Still, it certainly may look into i.t for the purpose of seeing whether the bill makes a .case of prima facie right to the *452office in the complainant; and if so, then to put the defendant on answering the bill, with a view to an account for the fees and profits, if it shall eventually be decided, by the proper tribunal, that the defendant is an intruder.

¶3I consider that the bill makes out such a prima facie case. Its averments sufficiently show that the office was not vacant and that the complainant was in the full possession and enjoyment and exercise of it, when, during the recess of the senate, the governor “commissioned” the defendant. If the defendant can support his commission, so as to take away the complainant’s right to treat him as an intruder and to call him to an account for the fees of the office, I think he must answer the ' bill.

¶4Demurrer overruled, with costs ; with liberty for the defendant to answer in twenty days, &c.

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