John Lowell

“ If no positive law intervenes, there is no sound distinction between assignments of one kind of property or another in regard to the trusts upon which it is to be held.
It results from the superior authority given to a deed of the debtor over a decree transferring his property, that an insolvent owning property in several States is forced to make an assignment, though he and all his creditors whose wishes can be ascertained would prefer that he should become a bankrupt under the law of his State ”

“ The working of our rule is sometimes very annoying. If an insolvent trading corporation, for instance, is being wound up by receivers in New York, for the equal benefit of all its creditors, precisely as such a corporation would be wound up in Massachusetts, and a debtor of the corporation is summoned as garnishee in Massachusetts, by a creditor of the corporation residing in Massachusetts, and answers that the receivers in New York have demanded payment of the debt or have begun an action for it against him, the Courts of Massachusetts will give precedence to their own attaching creditor. ”

“ The several States of the United States are, in law, foreign to each other, and the effect in one State of bankruptcy of a debtor in another State or in a foreign country depends upon the doctrines of private international law as understood in the States in which the questions arise. ”

“ WHEN a trader or a trading corporation becomes insolvent the common law of England and America permits the several creditors to obtain such advantage and preference as legal diligence may chance to give them, and authorizes the debtor to make such preferences among them as he pleases. ”

“ In England the law was laid down about a century since, and has always been adhered to, that the decree of a foreign Court of the debtor’s domicile, vesting his property in trustees for creditors, transfers to them the personal property in England, in spite of any legal diligence which English creditors or others may afterwards seek to exercise. ”

“ It is, however, sometimes held that the trusts upon which land is conveyed, as well as the forms of conveyancing, must accord with the general policy of the law of the situs. It is undoubtedly true that if there is any positive law of the situs, it must govern ”