Samuel Nelson

“ The litigation is one of the most common occurrence growing out of the business affairs of life. It presents the case of a race of diligence among creditors after the property of a failing debtor to get the first security for the payment of their debts. There is no question here as to the bona fides of the creditors. The simple point between them is as to which party in the race acquired the better title to the property. All the parties, debtor and creditors, were citizens and residents of the State of New York. ”

“ If invalid, then it remained in him quoad creditors till the 5th, when the attachment was levied. Now, this question was one simply of law, and it turned upon this: whether the assignment was to be governed by the law of New York, where the instrument was made, and in which State all the parties resided, and of which they were citizens, or by the law of Illinois, the situs of the property. In New York the immediate delivery of the possession, as is said, is not essential to the validity of the assignment; in the State of Illinois it is. ”

“ In the race of diligence, the defendants here and plaintiffs below, Van Buskirk and others, obtained from Bates, the debtor, on the 3d of November, an assignment of the property as security for their debt. It was executed at Troy, New York. But, before the agent reached Chicago to take actual possession, Tillinghast & Warren, the other creditors, on the 5th of the month, two days after the assignment, instituted proceedings in a court in Illinois against Bates, the debtor, and attached the safes, subsequently obtained a judgment by default, and sold them on execution. ”