Landauer v. Conklin

Citations

• 3 S.D. 462
• 54 N.W. 322
• 1893 S.D. LEXIS 6

Syllabus

<p>1. A general assignment by an insolvent debtor for the benefit of his creditors, being within the policy of the law, must be construed and controlled by the same rules as apply in cases of ordinary contracts and conveyances, including the presumption of good faith.</p> <p>2. Sections 4667 and 4668, Comp. Laws, requiring an inventory and affidavit to be attached and filed with the assignment, are mandatory in the sense of making the doing of such acts essential to the validity of the assignment, but they are not mandatory in the sense of requiring such acts to be performed in the exact form and terms of the statute.</p> <p>3. It is not essential that such inventory recite upon its face that it is a full and true inventory, showing the several matters enumerated in the subdivisions of said section 4667; the requirement being that the assignor must make and file, not what purports to be a full and true inventory, but what is so, in fact. '•</p> <p>4. The inventory in this case examined, and held sufficient both as to form and substance.</p> <p>5. Section 4668 requires an affidavit of the assignor “to the effect that the same is in all respects just and true to the best of such assignor’s knowledge and belief.” The use of the very words “just and true” is not indispensable. Any equivalent words are sufficient.</p> <p>6. An affidavit which in all other respects meets the requirements of the statute, but omits the word “just,” is not on that account necessarily ' fatally defective. Farmer v. Cobban, (Dak.) 29 N. W. Rep. 12, distinguished.</p> <p>7. A fundamental rule of interpretation applied to statutes, mandatory as well as directory, is that words in a statute, if of common usé, are to be taken in their natural and ordinary sense, without any forced or subtle construction either to limit or extend their import. •</p> <p>(Syllabus by the Court.</p>