Latest Important Cases the Record- Herald, Inter- Ocean, Examiner, and American. Judge Grosscup, who was aware of the ground taken twelve hours pre viously by Judge Hand in New York, said:— "In the absence of the stating of any par ticular form I should think, at least as against a trespasser, that the publisher was invested with authority to determine the form of copyright. He might not have that right as against the author, when it comes to deter mining their rights under the contract, but certainly he would have that right on behalf of himself and the author, having the manu script in his hands, as against a trespasser." Corporations. Fiduciary Duties of Pro moters—Breach of Trust in Taking Secret Profits—Joint Tortfeasors. Mass. The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachu setts, in a decision handed down Sept. 15 in the case of Old Dominion Copper Mining & Smelting Co. v. Albert S. Bigelow, awarded the plaintiff $2,045,726, and placed itself on record in opposition to the ruling offered by the United States Supreme Court in the Lewisohn case. Chief Justice Knowlton and Mr. Justice Norton dissenting in their view of the law and Mr. Justice Hammond with regard to the facts. The decision follows the Court's former one in 1905, holding Bigelow under liability for a breach of his fiduciary relation to the cor poration. The Court (Rugg, J.) said:— "It would be a vain thing for the law to say that the promoter is a trustee. subject to all the stringent liabilities which inhere in that character and at the same time say that, at any period during his trusteeship and long before an essential part of it was executed or his general duty as such ended, he could, by changing for a moment the cloak of the promoter for that of director or stockholder, by his own act alone, absolve himself from all past, present or future liability in his capacity as promoter. "Nothing can be said in support of a busi ness enterprise carried on by promoters, which involves the purchase by them of mines, cost ing and intrinsically worth $1,000,000, with money in substantial part solicited from as sociates on representations that a corporation is to be formed with a capitalization of $2,500,000, of whose stock $2,000,000 is to be issued for conveyance to it by them of the mines and the rest for cash, the actual organi zation of the corporation under the laws of a
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state which permitted the issuance of capital stock for property conveyed only to the real value of the property with a capital of $3,750,000, of which $3,250,000 is issued as fully paid for conveyance of the mines, the settlement with a very great majority of the associates on the basis of a sale for $2,000,000 of stock as at first represented, the promoters retaining 1,250,000 shares as a secret profit, intending also to procure from the public subscriptions for $500,000. . . . "The ground of the defendant's liability is his breach of trust as a promoter. It follows from what has been said as to the nature of the wrong done by the defendant that he is liable in solido. The act of the defendant and Lewisohn was a joint act for the benefit of both. . . ." The Court further decided that the plain tiff is not barred from recovery by the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in the case of Company v. Lewisohn. Bigelow was not a party, nor was there any evidence that he participated in the defence of that case. It further decided that the final decree in that case is not a bar. Chief Justice Knowlton, in a dissenting opinion, held that the decision of the federal Court settled the merits of the present case. "In addition to the deference that a unani mous opinion of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States should receive in any other Court, it is for me a very important consideration that upon questions which will often be litigated in the federal tribunals by reason of the diverse citizenship of the parties the law ought to be the same in the state courts as in the federal courts. It would be unfortunate if in this large class of cases the rights of a suitor should depend on whether he is finally held subject to the jurisdiction of a federal court or to that of a state court." Corporations. Personal Liability of Direc tors—Ignorance Due to Neglect of Duty Action able. N. Y. Thirteen former directors of the Trust Com pany of the Republic were held responsible in a decision made public Sept. 3 by Justice Van Kirk, for losses sustained by the trust company through loans made in 1902 by its president, Daniel Leroy Dresser, from the company's funds on securities of the United States Shipbuilding Company, for which resti tution to the trust company was asked in a suit brought by Charles H. Kavanaugh, a
