Cunningham v. Elm Grove Zinc & Lead Mining Co.
Cunningham v. Elm Grove Zinc & Lead Mining Co.
Opinion of the Court
— The defendant is a mining company created under the laws of the Territory of Arizona. In April, 1901, four several judgments amounting in the aggregate to about $900 were recovered against the defendant before a justice of the peace in actions commenced by attachment. In three of them the J. R. Crow Coal Company was plaintiff and in the fourth Fink & Co. were plaintiffs. The writs were levied on the property of the defendant by the constable. 'While the property of defendant was in the custody of the constable under said writs and was about to be sold under the orders of the justice the above-entitled action was brought in the circuit court by attachment for a much larger amount. Shortly after the last-referred-to action was brought the court on the application of the plaintiff made an order appointing a receiver
It appears that L. Depee and several other persons on June 8, 1901, each filed before the receiver a claim for labor performed as miners for the defendant within six months next preceding the seizure under the attachment writs. It further appears from the affidavits of some of the claimants that part of the labor for which they made claim was performed after the levy of the attachment writs by the constable, but since the claims were allowed without any exception being filed thereto by either the creditors or other person interested therein, any objection based on that ground is not now available; and besides this, it appears from a stipulation contained in the record that our review of the case is to be confined to the consideration of the single question of whether or not the court erred in decreeing that the attaching creditors in the actions before the justice were entitled to priority of payment over the claims for labor.
It has been ruled that wages due employees of a railway company at the time the receiver took possession of the property may be paid out of the earnings or out of the corpus of the property. Union Trust Co. v. Railway, 117 U. S. 434; Miltenberger v. Railway, 106 U. S. 286; Wallace v. Loomis, 97 U. S. 146; Trust Co. v. Railway, 103 N. Y. 245. It is true that in each of the cases just cited the equitable rule was applied where the labor for which the claim was made was performed in operating a railway which became insolvent and for which a receiver was subsequently appointed, but the reasons given by the courts for ordering the preference
Section 1006, Revised Statutes, provides that all debts due employees by corporations “for wages of their labor” performed within the.three months next preceding a demand therefor shall have priority of payment from the money and assets in the hands of any receiver over every other claim not specially secured. This section was brought forward from the revision of 1879 where it was numbered 761. In 1889 the Legislature for the first time enacted section 4911 — Revised Statutes 1889 — which was continued in the present revision-1899 — as section 3167. By this latter section it is provided that when the property of any corporation shall be seized upon any process of any court of this State, or when its business shall be suspended by the action of creditors or put into the hands of a trustee, the debts owing to laborers or servants for labor to an amount not exceeding one hundred dollars performed within six months next before the seizure or transfer of such property shall be preferred and first paid in full. It is thus seen in the first of the two sections just adverted .to that debts due for labor are preferred over every other claim- “not secured by specific liens on the (corporate) property” “or not specially secured.”
While these two sections are in pari materia, it is quite clear that they can not be reconciled; but as the latter is a subsequently enacted statute it must be upheld as against the former wherever there is a conflict between them. It was, we think, the manifest intention of the Legislature by the latter to secure to laborers and servants, to whom wages are due by any company, eor
The question here is whether the claims for labor are entitled to preference over liens acquired by seizure of the common debtor’s property under judicial process, and therefore it becomes unnecessary to further notice the construction placed on section 3167 in Fitzgerald v. Meyer. It seems to us that we may concede the attachment liens on the property of the defendant in the hands of the receiver were valid in every respect, and yet hold the labor claims of Depee and the others were entitled to a preference in the order of payment over all the other creditors, including the attaching creditors, or, in other words, they — the labor claims — were entitled to be first paid in full out of the fund in the hands of the receiver.
It results that the decree of the circuit court in so far as it ordered the claims of the J. R. Crow Coal
Reference
- Full Case Name
- WILLIAM M. CUNNINGHAM v. ELM GROVE ZINC & LEAD MINING COMPANY, Respondent L. DEPEE
- Cited By
- 1 case
- Status
- Published