Benjamin Robbins Curtis

“ Where no relief can be given without taking an account between an absent party and one before the court, though the defect of parties may not defeat the jurisdiction, strictly speaking, yet the court will make no decree in favor of the complainant. ”

“ It was a bill to reach real assets in the hands of a surviving partner. The complainant's judgment was upwards of seventeen years old, and no step had been taken to revive it against the administrator or the heir. His decision, in accordance with two previous cases to which he refers, was, that such a creditor could sustain the bill, though it might be necessary to direct him to proceed at law to revive his judgment. ”

“ That, in some cases, he may join with the administrator a third person, who is in possession of property which is amenable to the payment of the debt, is also clear. The instances in which it has been actually held that such third person might be joined, are chiefly cases of collusion between the administrator and the third person possessed of assets, insolvency of the administrator, and where the third person was the surviving partner of the deceased. ”

“ There is reason to suppose, from some allegations in the bill, that a part or the whole of the property was conveyed by Leroy Pope, in 1831, to Louis McLane, as Secretary of the Treasury, to secure a debt due to the United States by a deed of trust, and this conveyance is not impeached. If it embraced the whole or any part of the property now in question, only an equitable estate therein was left in Leroy Pope. The bill is not distinct in its allegations on this subject; but we do not deem it necessary that it should be ”

“ For, while it is generally agreed that some special case must be made, it is also declared in all the cases, that what is to constitute it has not been limited by any precise and rigid rule. In Holland v. ”