263 Pa. 354 | Pa. | 1919
Opinion by
On bill filed the Court of Common Pleas of Allegheny County, appointed a receiver for the National Hog Company, an insolvent corporation. Subsequently proceedings in bankruptcy were instituted in the District Court of the United States for the Western District of Pennsylvania, and a receiver and afterwards a trustee in bankruptcy were appointed by that court. These proceedings, of course, superseded the receivership in the Court
It would be an anomaly in the law if a receiver, who is an officer of the court appointing him, was denied the right to account to that court. He is'the arm of the court, doing the court’s work, and all that he has he holds for the court. Doubtless Congress could require that an accounting where bankruptcy supervenes, should be had only in the bankruptcy court, for the control of Congress over such matters is supreme; but it would require a clear expression of such an intention, before the courts would so hold. In the present case there is no such clear expression in the statutes. The district courts, sitting in bankruptcy, have varied in their conclusions as to whether or not such a requirement is necessarily implied from the language used in the several bankrupt acts; but the State courts seem to be of one mind in antagonism to such a claim, and the Supreme Court of the United States in In re Watts, 196 U. S. 1, said, under circumstances existing here: “It remained for the State court to transfer the assets, settle the accounts of its receiver, and close its connection with the matter. Errors, if any, committed in so doing, could be rectified in due course and in the designated way.” We have not been advised of or found any
But no such settlement and ajustment could properly be made without a consideration of the account itself, and a hearing of the objections of interested parties; and no such hearing could bo efficacious, under the due process of law provisions of the Constitutions of the United States and of this State, without giving such interested parties an opportunity to produce their evidence touching the disputed items in the account. Both classes of objectors here are interested parties, yet neither was given an opportunity to produce evidence. That was clear error.
It must be understood that we decide no questions of law or fact arising on the accounting. All those matters must be considered and determined, in the first instance, by the court below.
The decree of the court below is reversed, the exceptions reinstated, and the record remitted with a procedendo.