Book Review: A Treatise on the Law and Practice of Receivers

Abstract

These volumes deal with a branch of the law where there has been great need of further analysis and discussion. Receivership law concerns extremely important questions, such as those connected with the liquidation of insolvent corporations by receivers. Yet there has been no authoritative work upon the subject with the exception of High, even the last edition of which was published before much important litigation arose. The present work seems adequately to accomplish the writer's purpose. It is encyclopedic rather than analytic in form. As such it has many commendable features. Especially helpful are the forms collected in the second volume, being selections from actual cases, though a more careful editing of and exclusion of extraneous detail from the forms reproduced would have saved much valuable space without detracting from the usefulness of this portion of the work. The index is extraordinarily complete and is very conveniently arranged, far more so than is usual in law text books. The chapters on the Trading with the Enemy Act and the Alien Property Custodian are interesting, although it is rather hard to see how these subjects elucidate the general subject of receivers. And the citation of cases seems to be as reasonably complete as could be expected. It is true there are some notable omissions. For instance the important decisions in New York in connection with the receiverships of the Metropolitan Surety Company aid of the Empire State Surety Company, and in Connecticut in connection with the receivership of the Aetna Indemnity Company, are either only barely mentioned or else omitted altogether. It is a pleasure to see the opinion of Judge Noyes of the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Second District, in The Pennsylvania Steel Co. v. New York City R. R. (1912) 198 Fed. 721, 736, on the subject of provable claims against receivers, given the prominence it deserves, but in all fairness the opposing authority should have been fully stated.