23 Misc. 2d 358 | N.Y. Sup. Ct. | 1960
This is an application by defendant Shear to vacate an order of this court which directed the Sheriff to commit said defendant until she complied with the judgment and order of this court.
Heretofore plaintiff instituted an action in this court to recover a judgment against the defendants alleging that the individual defendant had obtained the sum of almost $7,000 from plaintiff by means of fraud and false representations. After a five-day trial of the issues, the court rendered a decision in favor of plaintiff and a judgment was entered thereon on April 30, 1956 against the defendant wherein, among other things, the defendants were directed to transfer, assign and deliver to plaintiff the stock of the defendant corporation, all real and personal property belonging to the corporation, and to file an accounting of the moneys and property of plaintiff which were paid over by him to the defendants, and an accounting of the profits and expenses of the business of the defendant corporation.
No effort was made by defendants to comply with the directions contained in the judgment. Instead two motions were made for a new trial, both of which were denied. A notice of appeal was filed but apparently the appeal was never perfected. In July, 1956 a motion was made to punish defendant Shear for contempt for failure to comply with the judgment and the matter was referred to an Official Referee who, after a hearing, found and reported that defendant was guilty of a contempt of court. The Referee’s report was confirmed, defendant found guilty of a contempt of court and an order entered so adjudging her and permitting her to purge herself of the contempt upon payment of a fine of $50 and complying with all the other terms of the-judgment, upon failure to comply with which an order of commitment might issue.
On or about December 23, 1959 a motion was made directing defendants to show cause why they should not be punished for contempt and why the individual defendant should not be committed to jail pending compliance with the judgment entered in the action. An attorney, representing the defendants, con
From the time of the entry of the judgment in 1956 until the submission of the affidavit in opposition to the motion to punish for contempt on January, 1960, defendants made no efforts to comply with the judgment and it was not until the threat of a jail commitment became imminent that defendant Shear made any attempt to comply. Even then she failed to comply with the terms of the judgment, submitting merely a blank assignment of stock, without surrender of the certificates and without the filing of an account, her excuse for failure as to the latter being that she could not because she did not have any books. Defendant made no attempt to explain why she did not have any books of the corporation, nor how or when the books disappeared. In her affidavit, submitted in support of this motion, defendant admits she testified at the trial that she had some records up to the year 1954. After the decision in the action and the entry of the judgment thereon, defendant knew that she was required to account and should have taken precautions to make certain that the corporate and individual records which would be needed for the preparation of the account directed by the court were properly safeguarded. In addition thereto, section 10 of the Stock Corporation Law requires that a corporation keep correct books of account and of its business and transactions, and a book to be known as a stock book.
With the statement that she has no books as an excuse, defendant almost four years after the entry of the judgment directing her to account, and after having exhausted all legal efforts to avoid accounting, and after having been committed to jail for contempt for failure to obey the order of the court,
The court is of the opinion that defendant Shear has not complied with the order of the court and that the summary statement submitted for the purpose of obtaining her release is not a proper accounting but merely a statement of debits against which she has offset, as credits, various alleged expenses, including a salary to herself, which would seem to have no basis as a credit, and that such alleged credits are solely for the purpose of an attempt to show that defendant is not indebted to plaintiff.