Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

“ This is a bill in equity brought in the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, by persons formerly doing business as partners under the name S. H. P. Pell & Co., to restrain the defendants from proceeding with a suit against them in South Carolina charging them with fraud in partnership transactions in cotton and seeking to recover a million and a half of dollars. ”

“ The present plaintiff Thompson was the only party served in the South Carolina suit and he alleges that he was a special partner under the laws of New York, that he was adjudicated not to be liable as a general partner in the bankruptcy proceedings and that the Court had ancillary jurisdiction to make its decree respected. The other partners set up a discharge under a composition but as they were not served with process in South Carolina the only question raised before us is whether Thompson can maintain the bill. ”

“ We do not perceive that the decree just recited even purports to deal with the defendants' claim, and reading it in connection with the proposal as to Thompson in the offer of composition we find it at least difficult to understand it to have been directed against other creditors than those who assented to the latter. It is argued, to be sure, that the petitioners seeking to charge Thompson as a general partner were dismissed out and out and that that portion of the decree at least must be taken to operate in rem and decide against all the world that he was not one. ”