In re Receivership Lord & Polk Chemical Co.

Citations

• 7 Del. Ch. 248

Syllabus

<p>Act relating to insolvent corporations; Receivers under; ^Payment of debts under, not according to rank or grade — taxes; Ho lien on personal property without distress — when equity recognizes diligence in creditors.</p> <p>1. Equity looks not so much at the form of a debt as to the good faith in which it was made or created. The law recognizes diligence in creditors and gives them a preference according to the rank or grade of their debt; equity, however, imputes no particular merit to diligence unless the advantage thereby acquired amounts to a lien, or some vested right or interest which neither equity nor law will allow to be disturbed.</p> <p>2. There is no common-law rule which makes the levy and apportionment of the taxes ex proprio vigore liens on the property of the taxable. Such liens can only be created by statute. There is no statute in this State declaring real estate taxes to be liens on personal property, without the intervention of some kind of execution process. The only mode, therefore, of reducing them to such liens is by distress.</p> <p>3. The transfer of a fund from a legal to an equitable jurisdiction will not exempt it from the law of its original jurisdiction.</p> <p>4. Whenever a statute undertakes to provide for- a specific matter or thing already covered by a common-law rule, omissions in its provisions of certain portions of the rule may be taken as indicative of a legislative intent to repeal or abrogate the same. And this, though in all other respects the statute and common law are in exact conformity.</p> <p>5. Under the act relating to insolvent corporations which does not provide for the order in which the debts shall be paid, judgment debts have no precedence over simple contract debts.</p> <p>6. A receiver appointed under the act relating to insolvent corporations, paid off the real estate taxes out of a fund in his hands arising from the sale of the personal property. A real estate mortgage, being the first lien, was then fore