William Howard Taft

“ The Orinoco Iron Company then filed this bill in the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia to restrain the Secretary of the Treasury and the Treasurer of the United States from paying the fund still remaining in the Treasury to the Limited Company and its receiver Le Crone in accordance with the certificate of the Secretary of State, and asked that a receiver be appointed to receive the fund while the right of the complainant to appropriate the fund to its claim should be litigated. ”

“ Confined, as it necessarily must be, to cases where the officials of the government have only a ministerial duty to perform, and one in which the party complainant has a particular interest, the practice is a convenient one, well supported by both principle and precedent. ”