ARGUED AND DETERMINED

IN THE

COURT OF CHANCERY

OF THE

STATE OF NEW YORK,

BEFORE THE

HON. LEWIS H. SANDFORD,

LATE VICE-CHANCELLOR

OF THE FIRST CIRCUIT.

VOL. IV.

NEW YORK:

BANKS, GOULD & CO. 144 NASSAU STREET.

ALBANY :

GOULD, BANKS & GOULD, 104 STATE STREET.

1850.

Entered according to the Act of Congress in the year eighteen hundred and forty nine,

BY BANKS, GOULD & CO.

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New York.

ALEXANDER 8.

GOULD, PRINTER,

No. 144 Nassau street, New York.

1380

PREFACE.

THIS volume terminates with the close of the court of chancery, in the first circuit of the state of New York. By the constitution adopted in November, 1846, the court of chancery ceased to exist from and after the first Monday of July, 1847; except that the chancellor was continued in office for a year longer, for the purpose of disposing of causes ready for a hearing. The unfinished business of the court, was transferred by the constitution, to the supreme court thereby organized.

Vice-Chancellor Sandford continued to hear calendar causes until June 29th, 1847; and when his office expired onthe fifth day of July following, he had decided and settled the orders and decrees in all the cases and matters which had been argued before him. At the election of the judiciary of the state, held under the new constitution on the seventh of June, 1847, the then vice-chancellor was elected a justice of the New York Superior

Court.

In bringing to a close the Chancery Reports of the state of New York, the author feels impelled to express his belief, (without including his own work in the estimate,) that in no state or country, is there to be found a more valuable series of decisions in equity, than that contained in the reports of cases in equity decided in this state from 1814 to 1847. Every subject of equity jurisdiction, has, in that period, been discussed and illustrated in the judgments of the several eminent jurists who have pre

sided in the court of chancery; and the whole series forms an invaluable contribution to the great fund of jurisprudence.

Messrs. Banks, Gould & Co., who have published a large majority of the reports of chancery cases in this state, are justly entitled to the thanks of the bar and the public, not only for the handsome mechanical execution of their publications, but more especially for their liberal enterprise which induced the preparation of several volumes, that otherwise would never have seen the light.

New York, December 1, 1849.