1905-03-25-New York Times-His Shipbuilding Suit Surprise To Plaintiff
New York Times
25 March 1905, page 10
HIS SHIPBUILDING SUIT SURPRISE TO PLAINTIFF
Action Started Against D. Leroy Dresser Apparently by Young.
CLAIM MAY HAVE BEEN SOLD
Suit Is Against a Bankrupt for $926,100 -- Assignment and Judgment Enter the Case.
That part of the financial community which has followed the course of the odds and ends of litigation into which the United States Shipbuilding Company affair has resolved itself had reason to believe yesterday that John W. Young, son of the great apostle of the Mormons, and the original promoter of the Shipyard Trust, was surprised to wake up and find himself again a plaintiff in a shipbuilding action.
Ex-Judge Dittenhoefer, who appears as Young's counsel in the suit brought to get an accounting from the Mercantile Trust Company and others for the entire $60,994,000of securities of the shipbuilding company, expressed his surprise to his legal acquaintances when he read that Young was now suing D. Leroy Dresser, the bankrupt head of Dresser & Co. and brother-in-law of George W. Vanderbilt, for $926,100 of the same securities alleged to have been given to Mr. Dresser by Young's agent and converted to Mr. Dresser's use.
There is a mystery about the identity of the real plaintiff in this latest Young action and behind the mystery lies a bit of Shipbuilding history not heretofore printed. Last August, when the Reorganization Committee of the shipbuilding company was about to take over from the various security holders the bonds of the company for the purposes of the reorganization, Young filed a protest against such transfer with the Commonwealth Trust Company, the Sheldon syndicate, the Reorganization Committee, and Receiver James Smith, Jr., of the company, setting forth that he, Young, was the rightful owner of the entire capitalization, and that all deliveries by the Mercantile Trust Company, Trustee of the bonds, to any parties had been in violation of the underwriting agreement. The protests were duly filed.
In September following the Commonwealth Trust Company got from Young for $30,000 an assignment of all right, title, or interest to and in the securities, past, present, or future, and in turn transfered this to the Reorganization Committee, thus clearing up its title to its holdings.
Meanwhile there had been reposing in the law offices of Sumerwell, Shoup & Vermilya, 35 Nassau Street, a judgement for $10,000 against Young as the result of litigation over some railroad deals in Utah, and talk had been going around of an examination in supplementary proceedings. So things stood until November.
On Nov. 3, according to the papers on file in the Supreme Court in the case against Dresser, Young swore to his complaint in the Dresser action in the offices of his attorneys for that action, Sumerwell, Shoup & Vermilya, but for some reason as yet unexplained, the papers were not served, but held, as it were, in reserve. The summons accompanying the complaint bears the date of Feb. 10, but the service was itself considerably more recent.
Nothing was heard further of the ten-thousand-dollar judgement, and Young, in due course of time, brought his suit in the United States courts against the Mercantile Trust Company.
It was learned yesterday that the claim on which the complaint against Mr. Dresser is made has been considered as more or less for sale ever since its existence became known. In fact, it is learned definitely one offer to sell it was made at the Commonwealth Trust Company and there refused. It is on account of this knowledge that there is a puzzle as to the actual ownership of the claim at the present time.
