54 Ga. App. 395 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1936
“Upon the dissolution of a corporation, for any cause, all of the property and assets of every description belonging to the corporation shall constitute a fund — first, for the payment of. its debts, and then for equal distribution among its members. To this end the superior court of the county where such corporation was located shall have power to appoint a receiver, under proper restrictions, properly to administer such assets under its direction.” Code, § 22-1208. The property of a corporation, upon its dissolution, becomes vested in its members and stockholders. The legal title to the property passes to them as tenants in common, or partners, subject to corporate liability. 8 Thompson on Corporations (3d ed.), 725, § 6541. Especially is this true where, as in this case, more than ten years elapsed after the expiration of the corporate charter, and it does not appear that any receiver was ever appointed, or that any corporate debt existed at the time of the dissolution or remained as a legal liability after the subsequent long lapse of time. The instant plaintiff, owning 114 of the 300 or less total shares of the stock, held as a tenant in common a proportionate ownership in the corporate assets.
“One tenant [in common] is as much entitled to the possession [of personalty] as the other. The possession of one is, in law, the possession of both. . . An exception to this rule, is where there is a destruction or loss of the common property by one of the tenants. . . Another exception is found in the case of a sale of the whole property by one tenant. Tenants in common having equal right of possession, and an undivided property, one has no right to dispose of the property and transfer the possession, to the injury of the other . . and it would seem too, that, for the like reason, any user of the joint property, which amounts to a disclaimer of the title of the cotenant, or which is inconsistent with his right of property, ought to constitute an additional exception.” Hall v. Page, 4 Ga. 428, 435 (48 Am. D. 235); Starnes v. Quin, 6 Ga. 84, 87; King v. Neel, 98 Ga. 438, 441 (25 S. E. 513, 58 Am. St. R. 311); Hale v. Hale, 28 Ga. App. 509 (111 S. E. 740). In the instant action for malicious arrest and false imprisonment of the plaintiff, against his will, by an arresting officer of a town, there was testimony for the plaintiff, that, after certain stockholders of a dissolved corporation had
Judgment reversed.