Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 3.djvu/831

824 FEDERAL REFOBTEIi. �tention" of the property of the bankrupt, and from "injury to the property of the bankrupt;" "together with the like right to sue for and recover the same as the bankrupt might have had" but for the bankruptcy. �It will be observed that there are two limitations of the assignee's power of suit, which are — First, that the thing sought to be reeovered shall be such as, when reeovered, shall be assets of the estate; and, second, that the action brought shall not be an action of tort for damages, such as at common law is strictly personal, and dies with the person. . Beyond these two exceptions it is difficult to imagine how powers of civil suit, whether in equity or at law, could be more ample than are conferred by this section of the bankruptcy law of con- gress. �The question whether the assignee may sue resolves. itself, therefore, into the question whether or not the fruit of the suit, if there be a recovery, shall come to the complainants as assets of the estate of the bankrupt. The law itself settles this question, for it expressly pro vides that ail rights in equity, ail choses in action, and ail causes of action arising from the unlawful taking or detention of the property of the bankrupt, and from injury to the said property, shall "vest in" the assignee in bankruptcy. �The Mil in this case sets eut various instances of the un- lawful taking of the property of the bankrupt, and enumerates repeated acts ruinously injurions to the estate. Even if the language of the act relating to the taking, detention, and injury of property was intended by congress to apply only to material "property," and not to money, credits, commercial paper, and stocks, the representatives of property; still, in vesting in the assignee ail "rights in equity," "choses in ac- tion," and "rights of personal action," the law necessarily vested, along with them, the fruits of those rights and actions when availed of by suit. �In Sawyer v. Hoag, 17 Wall. 619, in the United States supreme court, Mr. Justice Miller said for the court: "The assignee is the representative of the creditors as well as the bankrupt. He is appointed hy the creditors. The statute is ����