6 Mass. App. Ct. 825 | Mass. App. Ct. | 1978
1. The only ground of demurrer still argued is devoid of merit. Although inartistically drawn, the bill is recognizable as one brought under G. L. c. 214, § 3 (7) (as in effect prior to St. 1973, c. 1114, § 62), to reach and apply so much of the indebtedness of Colonial Court Management Corporation (Colonial) and William F. D’Annolfo (William) to D’Annolfo Construction Co., Inc. (Construction), as might be necessary to satisfy the plaintiffs claim against Construction and Frank P. D’Annolfo. 2. The motion of Colonial (not joined in by William) to strike portions of the bill was anomalous and properly denied for that reason alone. See and compare MacLennan v. MacLennan, 311 Mass. 709, 713 (1942). 3. The motions of Colonial and William (defendants) (a) to vacate the order of reference to the master and (b) for leave to file a jury claim were not filed until the sixteenth day following the date set for the completion of the pleadings, and it cannot be said that the denial of either motion involved any abuse of discretion. See Rules 44 and 45 of the Superior Court (1954). 4. An order had been entered appointing stenographers to take the testimony before the master (see Jones v. Wayland, 4 Mass. App. Ct. 725, 729 [1976], further appellate review granted, 371 Mass. 900 [1977]), and (as was stipulated at the argument) a transcript of that testimony had been timely furnished to the master. The court, acting at the request of the defendants, recommitted the original report to the master in order to permit the defendants to submit preliminary objections thereto in the manner contemplated by Rule 49, § 7, of the Superior Court as in effect until May 8,1976. The defendants thereafter submitted forty-seven objections to the master, together with a broadside request for summaries of the evidence claimed to be relevant to all the objections. See Cross Co. v. Clermont’s, Inc., 361 Mass. 874, 875 (1972). The master appended those objections to his amended report but provided no summary of any evidence. The defendants thereupon filed a second motion to recommit, for the purpose of securing the requested summaries. That motion was denied. A review of the objections discloses that forty-one of them were to "failure[s] of the [m]aster to find” certain facts which might have been helpful to the defendants. Such objections are essentially "worthless” (Minot v. Minot, 319 Mass. 253, 261 [1946]), and the denial of the motion discloses no abuse of discretion so far as those forty-one objections were concerned. O’Neill v. First Ipswich Co., 5 Mass. App. Ct. 820, 820 (1977). 5. The thrust of the remaining six objections was that the evidence before the master did not warrant the findings contained in six specifically numbered paragraphs of the master’s original report (all of which were incorporated by reference in the master’s amended report). None of these objections distinguished between and
Judgment affirmed.
