Keane v. Chamberlain

Citations

• 14 App. D.C. 84
• 1899 U.S. App. LEXIS 3547

Syllabus

<p>• Injunctions; Conflict of Laws; Assignments fob Benefit of Obeditobs; Estoppel.</p> <p>1. Whether Sec. 720, Rl S. U. S., providing that the writ of injunction shall not be granted in any court of the United States to stay proceedings in any court of any State, is locally applicable, so as to prevent the courts of this District from enjoining a party resident here from proceeding in a court of Maryland, discussed but not decided.</p> <p>2. The title and disposition of real property are exclusively subject to the laws of the State wherein it lies, which can alone prescribe the mode whereby the title may be passed; and this rule applies as well to the transmission of title by an assignment for the benefit of creditors as by deed.</p> <p>3. Under the laws of Maryland the general words of an assignment for the benefit of creditors are restricted by the particular description of a schedule which is made part of it; and where such an assignment, executed in this District, purports in the schedule to convey a life estate only of the assignor in lands in Maryland, the assignee will take only such life estate, although the assignment purports to convey all of the assignor’s property, and his life estate is coupled with a power of alienation by deed or will.</p> <p>4. Such an assignment is subject, so far as concerns the title to the Maryland land, to the provisions of a statute in that State, that no title shall pass to an assignee until his bond shall have been filed and approved, and to the construction placed upon that statute by the courts of that State to the effect that a lien acquired by attaching creditors after the date of the assignment is not affected by the subsequent execution arid approval of the assignee’s bond.</p> <p>5. And where, under such circumstances, an attaching creditor has reduced his claim to judgment in Maryland, the courts of this District will not at the suit of other creditors enjoin him from proceeding to execute his judgment against the la