Old Colony Trust Co. v. City of Wichita

Citations

• 123 F. 762
• 1903 U.S. App. LEXIS 4941

Syllabus

<p>1. Trustees—Right to Maintain Suit—Preservation of Trust Estate.</p> <p>A trustee in a trust deed has the power, and it is its duty, independently of the provisions of the trust deed, to invoke the aid of a court of equity to preserve the trust estate whenever the necessity arises.</p> <p>2. Mortgages—Construction—Transfer of Leasehold Estate.</p> <p>A telephone company executed a trust deed to secure bonds covering all of its property, real and personal, situated in the states of Missouri and Kansas, with all the privileges and appurtenances thereto appertaining, and all its rights and franchises. It owned in fee simple a number of telephone exchanges and plants in the state of Missouri, and held and operated a number in the state of Kansas under a lease from another company for 99 years, covering all the property and franchises of the lessor company. Held, that it was the purpose of the parties to cover all the interests of the grantee in any of the properties described, and that the terms of the deed were broad enough to include its leasehold estate in the Kansas properties and all its rights therein.</p> <p>3. Corporations—Transfers of Property—Right to Attack Validity.</p> <p>In a suit, by the trustees in a trust deed executed by a telephone company on all its properties and franchises to secure bonds which it has issued and sold, against a city, to protect the franchise rights of the company, the defendant cannot question the legality of the transfers by which the company acquired the ownership of the property and franchises from other companies, on the ground that they were ultra vires.</p> <p>4. Telephone Companies—Franchise Granted by City—Assignability.</p> <p>A city ordinance, granting to a telephone company, “its successors and assigns,” the right to erect and maintain poles and wires in the streets, grants a franchise which is assignable under the laws of Kansas, although the words “successors or assigns” do not appear in the title; and such franchis