141 Ky. 374 | Ky. Ct. App. | 1910
Opinion of the Court by
Affirming.
The Co-operative Canning Company, of Nortonville, Ky., made an assignment for the benefit of its creditors on December 18,1909, and this suit was brought by some of the creditors under section 1910 Ky. Stat., charging that certain payments had been made by the corporation to the Madisonville Savings Bank and to the First State Bank of Nortonville in contemplation of insolvency, and with the design to prefer them to the exclusion of the other creditors. An answer was filed by the defendants traversing the allegations of the petition. A trial was had. The circuit court dismissed the petition and the plaintiffs appeal.
The appeal raises simply a question of fact. We have read the record with care. In equity cases this court will give judgment according to the truth of the matter as it appears to it from the record; but we give some weight to the finding of the chancellor, and we do not disturb his conclusion on the facts where on all the evidence the truth of the matter is doubtful. The Canning Company began business in 1908; it had a paid in capital of about $4,000.00. At the close of the season of 1908, it owed $1,600.00, and it had about $800.00 of material and the like on hand. They borrowed from the First State Bank $1,600.00 and paid the debt. The loss that year they supposed to be due to the fact that they did not have enough tomatoes to keep the plant running regularly, so the next year they made contracts for a much larger acreage, and supposed that they would be all right. The company was organized by a number of
It is evident from all the proof that those managing the Canning Company thought they were going to come out ahead until the tomatoes were sold. Their losses seem to have come from the fact that their goods brought less than they anticipated, and a drought cut short the yield of their crops so that they had less goods to sell than they expected. The payments were all made by the usual course of business, and were evidently made by the directors upon the assumption that the money would be raised as it had been the year before to pay the farmers for their tomatoes. Nobody seems to have anticipated insolvency, and it is very clear from all the evidence that there was no actual intent to prefer one creditor to another. Even after the assignment was made, if the property of the company could have been sold for anything near its cost, the creditors would not have suffered. It is true it was afterwards sold at a great sacrifice, but
Judgment affirmed.'