Tunesma v. Schuttler

Citations

• 114 Ill. 156
• 28 N.E. 605

Syllabus

<p>1. Chancery—jurisdiction to enforce legal rights, as distinguished from, those which are merely equitable. It does not follow that because rights are legal ones they are not cognizable in a court of equity. If there are any equitable conditions authorizing that court to act at all, it will, if necessary to do complete justice, enforce legal as freely as equitable rights. In exercising its jurisdiction when it has once attached, it is wholly immaterial whether the rights to be enforced are purely legal or are merely equitable in their character.</p> <p>2. Same—stockholders’ liability—enforcement in chancery—to the ex~ elusion of the remedy at law. A bill filed by certain creditors of an insolvent banking corporation, on their behalf and for all other creditors, against the several stockholders in the same, alleged the insolvency of the bank, a, deficiency in assets to pay its creditors, the personal liability of stockholders, under the charter, to the depositors and creditors, the existence of some nine hundred unpaid depositors, some of -whom were seeking, by separate suits at, law, to get an advantage over the others, and that such separate litigation would waste and exhaust the proceeds of this liability of stockholders, the only fund to which depositors could look for payment, and asking to have an account taken of all the liabilities of the bank, and establish the amount for which the various stockholders were liable personally, and to have the amount of the debts proven apportioned among the stockholders: Held, that the bill clearly showed a case for equitable relief, and gave the court jurisdiction of the subject matter. ;</p> <p>3. The fundamental principle upon w'hich bills of this kind are maintained, is, equality of benefit and burden among a numerous class of persons similarly situated, in respect to a particular fund. The principle that equality is equity, is one of the most fruitful sources of equity jurisdiction.</p> <p>4. Same—conclusive'!less of d