Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/118

106 FEDEEAL BEPOETEE. �charged with the same duties and in favor of the same creditors, sit- ting in a state adjoining, or in the District of Columbia. If the assets Bought by the bill are within the oontrol of this court, an independent jurisdiction, then the same reasons exist for refusing to aid the com- plainant in appropriating them to the exclusion of the whole body of creditors who are entitled to the protection of the court in bankruptcy, wherever sitting, as much as if the assets were in the District of Colurnbia. The case might be different if the complainant had ever become so vested with the absolute title to the property as to need no further adjudication to determine his rights or to make them available. Tvistead of that being the case, it is only in and through a further judg- ment of some competent court that it can be ascertained whether he has any right or title whatsoever. �On the other hand, section 4979 and other sections of the bank- rupt law indicate a policy to permit, if not to require, all adverse claims upon the bankrupt estate to be adjudieated in the courts of bankruptcy. If, therefore, the receiver had, prior to the bankruptcy, a complete legal title to the property transferred to Tanner, or even a complete and perfect legal lien upon it, recognizable by general law, then it would seem that the court in bankruptcy is the proper forum in which to assert his title or lien, and that it ought to be there fully recognized and enforced; whOe, if his title or his lien is imperfect or inchoate only, he cannot be entitled to any aid from this court or any other court to perfect it, against the interests of other creditors, after the commencement of proeeedings in bankruptcy, and the vesting of the property in the bankrupt's assignee under section 5046. �The essential point in the decision of Booth v. Clarke is that a receiver's title to property not reduced to possession and not sup- ported by any assignment from the debtor, ia not such a title as will prevail in independent tribunals against the interests of other credit- ors entitled to its equal protection; and if this doctrine is applied as regards the undisputed property of the debtor, it would seem to be stJU more applicable to cases where a fraudulent assignment stands in the receiver's way, and the prellminary judgment of this court is required in aid of his alleged title. �3. Aside, however, from the question of the receiver's stand- ing in this court in such a suit as this, it is clear that he cannot maintain this action except upon the basis of his holding the legal tii le to the assigned property by virtue of the order of the state court ap pointing him receiver prior to the commencement of the proeeed- ��� �