85 Va. 413 | Va. | 1888
delivered the opinion of the court.
The case is as follows: In the month of April, 1853, a bill was filed in the circuit court of Nelson county by Thomas M. Farrow and James Durrett against M. I. Crawford and others, seeking to have an account of the debts and liabilities of the late George H. Crawford, which were binding upon the land purchased by the said Farrow from the said George H. Crawford, and to have an administrator of the estate of the said George H. Crawford appointed, etc. And in June following, D. J. Hartsook filed a bill in the same court, seeking an account of the debts and demands due by the estate of the said Crawford, to subject his land to the payment thereof. Other suits and claims were pressed against the estate of the said Crawford, when his debts being, as is alleged, large and numerous, in September following the court made an order enjoining all proceedings outside of these suits to collect any debts by the creditors, either by fieri facias, by deeds of trust, or otherwise. These suits proceeding in 1869, the judge of the court indorsed an order on a rough draft of an unsigned decree as follows: “ This cause is .to he continued until the case of Woods v. Farrow, and others, removed from Buckingham, is tried.” Signed, “L. P. T.,”—the initials of the presiding judge, the late Judge Lucas P. Thompson. In March, 1885, the amount in the hands of Crawford’s administrator was ascertained to be,, principal and interest, $1,889.39. This sum was apportioned among the various creditors of Crawford, and a decree rendered for its payment. Under this decree the administrator of Crawford defaulted, and the decree proved unavailing. Whereupon, Hartsook’S administrator filed an amended bill against the sureties
The matter in controversy is that which is the essence and substance of the judgment, and by which the party may discharge himself. By what sums, then, might the defendants below—the appellees here—discharge themselves, and be acquitted of all claim against them by the appellants? We have seen that it is respectively $221.65 and $97.06. It is clear that the matter in controversy is that for which the suit is brought, and not that which may or may not come in question. The suit here by the appellants, respectively, is for their ascertained claim against the administrator, for which he defaulted, and for which they now seek to hold the sureties of the administrator responsible; If these sureties paid this, they would
Appeal dismissed.