Business Organizations Law Commons^™

Federal Incorporation, Myron W. Watkins

Michigan Law Review

The course of development which rate regulation in general in this country passed through is well known. It may be briefly stated as follows: in the early cases it was held that when a state legislature prescribed a scale of maximum charges for a business affected with a public interest they substituted their will for the common law rule of reasonableness, and their determinations were held final and conclusive. This view was gradually modified so as to place a limitation upon the power of the law-making body in accordance with the view that the "use and income of property, as …

Corporations, Shareholders' Right To Have A Dividend Declared And Paid Out Of Surplus, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

In Dodge v. Ford Motor Co. (Mich. 1919), 170, N. W. 668, the questions were not new, and with one exception, the decision was not unusual, but the sums involved were enormos. The Motor Company was incorporated in 1903, under the general manufacturing incorporating act of Michigan (P. A. 232, 1903), for the manufacture and sale of automobiles, motors and devices incident to their construction and operation, with an authorized Capital Stock of $150,000-$100,000 then paid up, $49,000 in cash, $40,000 in letters patent issued and applied for, and $11,000 in machinery and contracts. In 1908 the stock was increased …

Domestic Corporate Tangible And Intangible Invested Capital, Frederick M. Thulin

Michigan Law Review

With a tax law on the statute books that fixes a moderate flat rate of taxation on business income, no question of invested capital need be considered. The income tax laws of 1913 and 1916 and the flat rate or normal tax section of the 1917 law and the proposed 1918 law bear out this statement.

Federal Incorporation, Myron W. Watkins

Michigan Law Review

We have traced in the foregoing part the principal cases bearing directly upon the federal power of incorporation. To gain a just perspective of the attitude the court may take upon the constitutionality of an act requiring uniform federal incorporation of all businesses engaged in interstate commerce it is necessary to complete our review by an examination of the trend of the court's decisions involving other portions of the field of commerce regulation. The construction placed upon acts exerting other forms of regulation will not be so conclusive to our inquiry as the adjudication of the cases reviewed in the …

Federal Incorporation, Myron W. Watkins

Michigan Law Review

Since the beginning of our national history the Constitution, which is essentially the source of the law rather than its framework, has with more or less promptitude fulfilled the function of sanctioning new rules of action which will permit a fairly symmetrical institutional development in the face of the changing conditions of the environment in which the people live and think and act. Always the habits of the people are changing, always the situation facts are being modified, and the Constitution in its widest and truest meaning but provides the means whereby thru this flux the body of the people …

Corporate Earnings As Gains Profits And Income As Depending Upon The Time Of Their Accrual, Robert M. Drysdale, Maurice C. Mcgiffin

Michigan Law Review

The discussion here has to do with the earnings of corporations as taxable income, whether such earnings remain in the hands of the corporation accumulating them, or are distributed to the stockholders as dividends, the inquiry being limited, however, to the question of the time of their accrual as affecting their taxability.

Partnership--Liability For Libel Published By One Partner

West Virginia Law Review

No abstract provided.

Public Utility Valuation - Going-Concern Value In Rate Making, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

What is the effect of a city ordinance which proposes to a public utility company the terms on which it may dispose of its product to the users, but which is rejected by the company? As to a company not yet doing business it is clear that the ordinance when rejected becomes a mere legal nullity. It never was more than an offer that might ripen into a binding contract by acceptance. That it is by no means a nullity as to a utility actually operating in the city after the expiration of its franchise and as a mere tenant …

Interstate Commerce Commission - Intrastate Rates, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

The marvelous possibilities for collision between State and Nation involved in our dual form of government are nowhere better or more often exhibited than in commerce regulation. We have long been learning the definition of the commerce which the constitution gives Congress power to regulate. It is only recently that we are finding how this power reaches over into purely intrastate business done by a carrier also engaged in interstate commerce. That nearly all rail carriers are now engaged in such business, even when their lines are wholly intrastate, has been often illustrated under the Second Employer's Liability Act. In …

Liability Of Corporations For Slander, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

S. entrusted by the president and general manager of a corporation with the business of obtaining a settlement from plaintiff for a mistakenly supposed shortage in his accounts with the corporation, falsely orally charged him with embezzlement. This charge was made to R., president of another corporation for which the plaintiff was working at the time, and as a step toward getting a settlement by the plaintiff. On the request for a directed verdict, by the defendant, the legal question was presented whether a corporation is liable for slander spoken by the agent of the corporation in the course of …

Partnership Entity And Tenancy In Partnership: The Struggle For A Definition, Joseph H. Drake

Articles

PARTNERSHIP is a legal entity formed by the association of two or more persons. This definition of a partnership as a person or entity represents what may be characterized as a generally accepted theory among American jurists at the time of its publication in 1893. But a later definition says: "A partnership is an association of two more persons." "A partner is co-owner with his partners of specific partnership property holding as a tenant in partnership." The second definition shows that the Commissioners on Uniform State Laws have rejected the entity theory and coined a new term to describe partnership …

Código De Comercio, Panamá

Mario Diaz Cruz Library

Edición oficial.

At head of title: República de Panamá.

Public Utility Valuation, Edwin C. Goddard

Articles

EVERY consideration of valuation of a public utility, whether for the purpose of condemnation for purchase or as a basis for fixing rates or permitting the issue of stock or bonds, must start from Sinyth v. Ames, and the rule therein laid down by HARLAN, J., at page 546: "We hold, however, that the basis of all calculations as to the reasonableness of rates to be charged by a corporation maintaining a highway under legislative sanction must be the fair value of the property being used by it for the convenience of the public. And in order to ascertain that …

Preliminary Stock Subscription Agreements In Missouri, Manley O. Hudson

University of Missouri Bulletin Law Series

Preliminary stock subscription agreements are no longer in general use. In the early part of the last century they were a popular means of organizing corporations, but the more modern general statutes of incorporation which now exist in all of the states have made it less convenient to resort to such methods of organization. In some instances they are still necessary, however. Whenever the organization of a quasi-public or cooperative undertaking is contemplated, they are not only convenient, but almost indispensable. If, for instance, it were proposed to build a railroad from Columbia to Jefferson City for which the capital …

Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace L. Wilgus

Books

The advantages of incorporation have long been recognized and frequently referred to in our law ... Upon the other hand the special advantages of Express Trusts have recently been stated .... It is my purpose to compare these two, -- Corporations and Express Trusts, -- in such detail as my time will permit, to discover, if perchance we may, something of the strength and weakness of each, for business purposes, under present day conditions.

The Foreign Corporation, Its Rights And Liabilities In Kentucky, Ryland C. Murick

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Corporations And Express Trusts: As Business Organizations, Horace La Fayette Wilgus

Books

No abstract provided.

Ultra Vires, Elmer D. Hays

Kentucky Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Corporations And Express Trusts As Business Organizations, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

PRESIDENT BUTLER of Columbia University is reported to have said in an address before the New York Chamber of Commerce in 1911, that "the limited liability corporation is the greatest single discovery of modem times, whether you judge it by its social, by its ethical, by its industrial, or, in the long run--after we understand it and know how to use it,--by its political, effects." 1

Interstate Commerce And State Control Over Foreign Corporations, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

Since Bank of Augusta v. Earle, 13 Pet. 519, there seems to have been no real occasion to doubt the power of a state totally to exclude foreign corporations seeking to engage in intrastate business only. The power to exclude being absolute, there has been no question as to the right of the state to allow the entrance of the foreign corporation for such business upon terms, and the terms may be of any sort, reasonable or unreasonable, except that the corporation seeking to enter cannot as a condition precedent to such entry be required to surrender a right or …

Interlocking Corporations, Harold M. Bowman

Michigan Law Review

Once more a striking phrase has suddenly become a part of our everyday speech and with it a cause, though it is as yet a more or less indefinite cause, has found a measure of prosperity. It is an effective phrase, one in which an advertising agent or a seeker of political catch words must take a pure delight. "Interlocking directorates." You do not have to hear it often to find yourself thinking of the boards of directors of many of the big corporations in the land as mortised and fitted to work in perfect unison-an interlocking, interchangeable, intercorporate marvel …

Some Unscheduled Liabilities Of Trust Companies, Henry M. Bates

Articles

"The modern trust company, with its varied and highly developed functions, is a characteristic product of our present complex civilization... The trust company, as some one has said, has become the corporation's corporation, a sort of super-corporation.... The question then naturally arises, is there any law peculiar to trust companies?"

Note And Comment, Gordon W. Stoner, Newton K. Fox, Walle W. Merritt, Albert E. Meder

Michigan Law Review

The Power of a Court to Compel a jury to Render its Verdict in Accordance with a Peremptory Instruction; The Liability of Municipal Corporations in the Discharge of Public or Governmental Duties and of Private or Corporate Duties; Some views of the Nature and Effect of Corporateness; Mitigation of Damages or Substituted Contract; Limitation of the Amount of a Carrier's Liability

Note And Comment, Walle W. Merritt, Albino Z. Sycip

Michigan Law Review

Death of Gustav Stein; "Unenforcible Trusts" Made Enforcible by Statute; What Becomes of the Real Property of An Eleemosynary Corporation Upon its Dissolution?; Crossed Checks in England, and an American Analogy;

The Standard Oil Decision: The Rule Of Reason, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

After twenty-one years the Sherman Anti Trust Act has been applied to the typical combination restraining interstate commerce, which that act was designed to prevent.

The Corporation Tax Decision, Ralph W. Aigler

Articles

Seldom, if ever, in the history of the country has the Supreme Court been called upon within a comparatively short period of time to decide so many questions of widespread interest and vital importance as has been the case during the last year or two. Attempts on the part of the state and national governments to regulate and control corporations, which in recent years have come to exercise such a large and not always wholesome influence upon affairs generally, have been the occasion for the consideration by the court of many of the important cases recently presented. Among these are …

The Passing Of State Control Over Railway Rates, Edson R. Sunderland

Articles

Congress has exclusive power to regulate interstate commerce, so far as it admits of a uniform system of regulation, and a failure on its part to regulate in a given case is tantamount to a declaration that such commerce shall remain free and unrestricted. Brown v. Houston, 114 U. S. 622; Leisy v. Hardin, 135 U. S. 100. The states are, in all such cases, without jurisdiction to regulate, irrespective of what Congress has or has not done.

What Is Interstate Commerce?, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

In the case of International Text-book Company v. Pigg, Advance Sheets May 1, 1910 (30 Sup. Ct. 481) the Supreme Court of the United States, decided April 4, 1910, that a "corporation engaged in imparting instruction by correspondence, whose business involves the solicitation of students in other states by local agents, who are to collect and forward to the home office the tuition fees, and the systematic intercourse between the corporation and its scholars and agents, wherever situated, and the transportation of the needful books, apparatus, and papers," is engaged in interstate commerce, and a state statute which makes the …

Right Of Joint Adventurers Holding All The Stock Of A Corporation To A Dissolution And Accounting In Equity, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

The case of Jackson v. Hooper, in the New Jersey Court of Errors and Appeals, decided February 28, 1910, by Judge DILL, (42 N. Y. Law Journal, March 8, 1910), overruling Vice Chancellor HOWELL, of the Court of Chancery (74 AtL. 130) presents interesting and unusual points in corporation and partnership law, and the jurisdiction of courts of equity over corporate affairs.

Purchase Of Shares Of Corporation By A Director From A Shareholder, Horace Lafayette Wilgus

Articles

It is generally laid down in the encyclopedias and text books, and affirmed in many court opinions that "the doctrine that officers and directors [of corporations] are trustees of the stockholders, applies only in respect to their acts relating to the property or business of the corporation. It does not extend to their private dealings with stockholders or others, though in such dealings they take advantage of knowledge gained through their official position."1 Much of this doctrine is based upon the language of Chief Justice SHAW in Smith v. Hurd2 decided in 1847. He said: "There is no legal privity, …