183 F. 753 | 4th Cir. | 1910
On July 9, 1909, a petition asking that A. F. Millan be adjudged a bankrupt was filed in the court below by the Exchange Bank of Mannington and three other creditors. The act of bankruptcy alleged was the making of a conveyance while insolvent with intent to prefer one Ii. R. Furbee. It is not denied that the petition aptly charges the commission of the second act of bankruptcy. .The objections made to it raise questions of form and of practice rather than of substance. It is said by the respondent: That the petition did not say that the debtor was not a wage-earner, nor that he was not principally engaged in farming or the tillage of the soil. The amended petition makes these allegations. It is objected that the petition is not properly verified. The verification of the amended petition seems in all respects sufficient. Walker v. Woodside (9th Circuit) 164 Fed. 680, 90 C. C. A. 644; 1 Remington on Bankruptcy, § 278.
The amended petition charged the same act of bankruptcy as that charged in the original petition and in substantially the same words. It is true that the amended petition was not filed until more than four months had elapsed after the commission of the act of bankruptcy charged. The law is well settled, however, that amendments relating to the number of the petitioning creditors, the amount and nature of their claims, to the occupation of the debtor and to errors and deficiencies in the verification of the original petition can be made more than four months after the commission of the act of bankruptcy. When so made they relate back to the date of the filing of the original petition. State Bank v. Haswell (Eighth Circuit) 23 Am. Bankr. Rep. 330, 174 Fed. 209, 98 C. C. A. 217; Ryan v. Hendricks (Seventh Circuit) 21 Am. Bankr. Rep. 570, 166 Fed. 94, 92 C. C. A. 78; In re Plymouth Cordage Co. (Eighth Circuit) 13 Am. Bankr. Rep. 665, 135 Fed. 1000, 68 C. C. A. 434; In re Bellah (D. C., Dist. of Del.) 8 Am. Bankr. Rep. 310, 116 Fed. 69.
The objection most seriously pressed upon us is that the original petition was not filed in duplicate, and that no duplicate original was filed within the four-month period. The record shows that the four months began to run from the 11th day of March, 1909, when the deed making what is alleged to be the preferential transfer was recorded. On the 9th of July, two days less than four months thereafter, the original petition was filed, and on the same day the clerk of the district court made and certified a copy of such petition which was delivered to the marshal with the summons and was by him given to the defendant contemporaneously with the service of summons. Collier on Bankruptcy (7th Ed.) 637, says that the law means by the word “duplicate” “two petitions, each an original, and not an original and a copy. This requirement is mandatory and failure to observe it is jurisdictional defect.” Remington, § 283, more cautiously contents himself with saying that the law requires originals. These statements rest upon the supposed authority of two cases: In re Stevenson (D. C.) 2 Am.
In the case now under consideration the original petition and the copy were both filed before the four months had expired. As the act itself declares, the only purpose of requiring duplicates of the petition to he filed is to provide what the Supreme Court in Official Form 4 refers to as a “copy” for the debtor, it could not be doubted that the law in any construction of it would he satisfied, although the body of one of the duplicate originals was written by one hand and the body of the other by another. The same judge who decided that “duplicate” as used in the statute did not mean an original and a copy, subsequently decided that the jurat or verification was no part of the petition. In re Bellah (D. C.) 8 Am. Bankr. Rep. 321, 116 Fed. 69.
If the creditors in person signed one petition and had some one else by tlieir authority sign their names to the other, it is by no means clear on general principles that each would not be a validly executed original. If the body of the petition, tlie signatures to it, its jurat and verification may all be written in one duplicate original by the pen of one man and in the other by the pen of another, what difference can it make to the debtor whether the paper served’ on him purports to be a duplicate original or is a copy of the original certified under the hand of the clerk and tlie seal of the court?
Affirmed.
NOTE. — Certiorari refused by Supreme Court January 9, 1911,'