Harlan F. Stone

“ There is nothing in the statute relating to the organization of federal land banks and the imposition of the stockholders' liability to suggest that by virtue of their membership in the corporation the stockholders can be said to have subjected themselves to a procedure for determining in their absence the essential conditions of liability, or to have relinquished their right to contest, as in any other litigation, every step essential to its establishment. ”

“ As the liability of the stockholders is to pay the debts of the bank to creditors 'equally and ratably,' judicial determination of the inability of the bank to pay its debts and the amount to be assessed against the stockholders to meet the deficiency are prerequisites to the enforcement of liability, and are essential parts of the only cause of action which the statute gives to the creditors. ”

“ The only means of enforcing the liability left to creditors of a joint-stock land bank, as the Court pointed out in the Wheeler Case, is an adversary suit in equity against the stockholders wherever they may be found.
The obligation which the statute imposes upon the stockholders is personal, and petitioners can be held to respond to it only by a suit maintained in a court having jurisdiction to render a judgment against them in personam. ”