Donnelly v. Hodgson
Donnelly v. Hodgson
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
Ellen Donnelly, a judgment creditor of the Butchers and Drovers’ Bank, exhibited for allowance in the probate court a demand against the estate of James B. Clemens, deceased, which was allowed and placed in the sixth class. On appeal to the circuit court, the same judgment was rendered, and ordered to be certified to the probate court.
There is an agreed statement of facts to the following effect: —
The Butchers and Drovers’ Bank was incorporated in 1867, and did a banking business in St. Louis until July
James B. Clemens, on July 13, 1877, and at the date of his death, was the owner and holder of ten shares of the capital stock of said bank, of the par value of $100, on which there remains unpaid $50 on each share. These shares were inventoried as a part of Clemens’s estate. Clemens died, and letters were, on March 15, 1878, granted on his estate. The widow administered. She afterwards married, and Hodgson became administrator de bonis non, and is now acting as such. Due notice of letters was published in each case. On April 7, 1881, notice of the demand in question was served on Hodgson. A certified copy of the judgment of Donnelly against the bank, and of the execution and return of nulla bona, are made part of the stipulation. The estate of Clemens has not been finally settled. The proper affidavit accompanied the demand.
Our statute provides (Rev. Stats., sect. 736) that: “If any execution shall have been issued against any corporation, and there cannot be found any property or effects whereon to levy the same, then such execution may be issued against any stockholders to the extent of the amount of the unpaid balance of such stock by him or her owned ; provided always, that no execution shall issue against any stockholders except upon an order of the court in which the action, suit, or other proceeding shall have been brought or instituted, made upon motion in open court, after sufficient notice in writing to the person sought to be charged; and upon such
A proceeding under this section cannot be maintained against the administrator of a deceased stockholder, for obvious reasons; and so we held in the recent case of Cummings v. Wright (11 Mo. App., 348).
Nor is there anything in the language of the provision which creates a direct liability of the stockholder to the creditor of the bank, so as to enable the creditor of the bank to sue the stockholder. The stockholder is not in privity with the creditor of the bank ; the creditor of the bank cannot, on account of any liability of the bank to him, assert that any stockholder of the bank and debtor of the bank is, therefore, his debtor. There is no statutory provision known to us, by which, for the peculiar protection of creditors of banking corporations, these corporations sustain with their stockholders a relation having some of the features of partnership. Where a stockholder owes the bank on account of unpaid stock, a judgment creditor of the bank having a nulla bona.: execution, may, by means of a certain statutory piovision, have satisfaction by proceeding to have an indebtedness of one or more stockholders to the bank for unpaid stock applied to the execution, and he may thus reach a special asset of the bank, but we cannot see that the right to have this remedy makes the stockholder in any sense a debtor of the judgment creditor of the bank. Clemens did not, in his lifetime, owe Mrs. Donnelly any balance on his unpaid stock, but he owed it to the bank; and unless Clemens in his lifetime was indebted to Mrs. Donnelly, it is plain that she cannot establish this demand against his estate. C., the creditor of A., may, by the garnishment process, obtain satisfaction of the debt by requiring B., the debtor of A., to pay him, C., the creditor of A., what B. owes to A. But this fact does not make B., when he is sum
We think that the judgment should be reversed and the cause remanded. It is so ordered.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.