86 Md. 305 | Md. | 1897
delivered the opinion of the Court.
There are four appeals in this record, and these cases with six others that await the determination of those now pending were in this Court on a former appeal; the decision being reported in 84 Md. 456. One of the questions involved is common to the ten cases—these four and the six still remaining in the Court below—but the other question is confined to three of the appeals now before us. We will first dispose of the question arising in all the cases and in another opinion we will deal with the remaining subject of controversy. On the former appeals the precise point at issue was the ownership of a fund in Court. The fund had been brought into Court under a bill of interpleader. On the one hand the fund was claimed by the appellee Colden Rhind, and on the other by the appellants who, with others, were members of a syndicate which had been formed to purchase and float a large block of the four and a-half per cent. State bonds of South Carolina. The fund litigated over arose in this way: The syndicate selected the Baltimore Trust and Guarantee Company to be its agent in negotiating with the officials of South Carolina respecting the purchase of the bonds. By one of the provisions contained in each of the several subscription agreements signed by every member of the syndicate it was stipulated that two-thirds of the two and one quarter per cent, interest to mature on said bonds between January the first, and July the first, eighteen hundred and ninety-three, should be paid by the Trust Company to R. A. Lancaster and Company “ for syndicate expensesLancaster, himself a member of the syndicate and also the agent of Rhind in promoting the undertaking, represented to the other members of the syndicate that he would be entitled to only about five hundred dollars of this sum so set apart for “ syndicate expenses',’ and he intimated if he did not assert that the rest of the money
We decided when these questions were presented on the former appeals that, under the contracts entered into between the Trust Company acting as the agent of the syndicate, and the State authorities of South Carolina, “ one ot the things which the members of the syndicate contracted to get, and one of the things that was to be their common property * * * was this six months’ interest. * * ” In other words, one of the things which was to be the common property of the syndicate was this very six months’ interest out of which the syndicate expenses were specifically payable. “The Trust Company,” we went on to say, “ was authorized to disburse in discharge of syndicate expenses from this common or partnership fund for the benefit of the whole syndicate, two-thirds.” * * In giving our reasons for the conclusion that the fund out of which the syndicate expenses were to be paid belonged to and was the property of the syndicate and not of Rhind, we proceeded
The lapsed or abandoned shares, that is, the shares which would have belonged to the Trust Company and certain members who failed to answer the bill of interpleader, were not separate and distinct funds belonging distributively to these particular members of the syndicate; but they were parts of a common fund, the whole of which was the property of the syndicate, held for ultimate distribution amongst such of the members as should in due season make claim thereto. These so-called lapsed shares did not belong to Rhind, nor were they owned by Lancaster. They, together with the other shares, made up a common or partnership fund which was divisible into as many properly apportioned parts as there might be rightful claimants. If the lapsed shares were fractions of an entire fund, the whole of which, undivided into parts belonged to the syndicate in common; then the failure of some of the members to claim the por
So much of the decree as has been appealed from, to-wit, see. ¿p of paragraph V is reversed with costs above and below, and the cause is hereby remanded for a netv decree in this particular, conforming to this opinion.