52 So. 796 | Miss. | 1910
delivered the opinion of tbe court.
Until the decision of the cases of Drennen & Co. v. Mercantile Trust & Deposit Co., 115 Ala. 592, 23 South. 164, 39 L. R. A. 623, 67 Am. St. Rep. 72, and LeHote v. Boyet, 85 Miss. 636, 38 South. 1, the doctrine of Fosdick v. Schall, 99 U. S. 235, 25 L. Ed 339, had been confined by the courts of this country exclusively to receiverships of insolvent railroad corporations. In the Drennen case the Alabama court extended the doctrine to claims of laborers against insolvent private corporations in the hands of receivers, and was followed by this court in the LeHote case, in which the claims given preference were those of laborers in and about the sawmill plant, a private corporation in the hands of a receiver, for their. services performed within the period of four months before the receivership, and jvhich were necessary to continue tire business and preserve the property of
We decline to extend the doctrine beyond the claims of laborers, the wage class, who are favored by law, and justly so, as illustrated by our statutes giving the laborer a lien on crops produced by him, and providing that there shall be no exemption from liability to judgment for labor performed, and also by the common law, which gives laborers who receive chattels for repair, at the request of the owner, the right to retain same as security for their debt. 19 Am. & Eng. Encv. of Law (2d ed.) 8. There is no difficulty in applying the doctrine in question to the claims of laborers; while, on the other hand, great injustice and inequality would result in its application to any other class of claims. To illustrate: In the instant case, the appellant is a merchant seeking a preference for feed stuff furnished this sawmill corporation with which to feed its oxen, to enable them to haul logs to the mill to be sawed into lumber, which lumber was on hand at the time of the appointment of
Affirmed.