2 Whart. 240 | Pa. | 1837
The opinion of the Court was delivered by
The bact of 1818 is not only remedial, but greatly beneficial; and it is consequently to be liberally construed in suppression of the mischief. It has lessened, if it has not eradicated, abuses by which creditors were baffled, and sometimes eluded. The debtor not only makes his own bankrupt law, but appoints his own assignees: the consequence of which was a defect of accountability, and sometimes an ineffectual pursuit of the fund by actions at law against successive trustees, who had it in turn, till pursuit were abandoned. The provision for registration extends to all the cases that are subject to the chancery powers of settlement of accounts and removal; and if an assignment for the benefit of particular creditors, be not within the one, it is not within the others. In the interpretation of such a lawr, the spirit of the enactment is to be extended to cases within the mischief, though not within thé letter. But what is the letter ? Not express, that the trust must be for all the creditors, but, speaking in reference to the debtor, that it be “ for the use of his creditors,” or “ for the use of such person to whom such assignment is made, and the other creditors.” Strike out the word ‘his’ in the first clause, and the remaining words, “for the use of creditors,” are literally satisfied by a trust for less than the whole. The assignment here is certainly for the use of creditors. But granting that the words, ‘his creditors,’ and ‘the other creditors,’ comprise the whole number, yet the reprobated construction put upon one of the best remedial statutes that ever was enacted, which was frustrated by the introduction into conveyances of a few insignificant words, should warn us of the danger of expounding remedial laws too narrowly. What was effected by those words in respect to the statute of uses, might, under the interpretation of the court below, be effected with equal facility in respect to the statute before us, which might be eluded by the simple device of leaving a single creditor out of the trust. Subject to be thus parried, the provisions of the law would be of little worth. It is known that this interpi'etation produced the specific provision for cases like the present, which is found in the act of 1836 ; and which had been indispensable, were it not entirely clear that a trust for particular creditors, is within the purview of the original act.
Taking the assignment, then, to be void, how far was the property vested in the plaintiff by the proceedings on the petition of the assignor as an insolvent debtor 1 The avoidance of the assignment for defect of registry, as to creditors, had relation to its date ; yet being good between the parties, the trustee acquired the property of the debtor as it stood at the time of his appointment. But he acquir
Judgment reversed, and a venire de novo awarded.