1908-06-02-New York Times-Fight for Delay in Dressers Suit
New York Times
2 June 1908, page 12
FIGHT FOR DELAY IN DRESSER'S SUIT
Lawyers for J.H. Hyde and Shipbuilding Co. Promoters Plead Illness and Previous Business.
TALK OF A SETTLEMENT
But Counsel for ex-President of Trust Company of the Republic Demands Immediate Trial of $990,000 Case.
After repeated delays, the suit brought in the Nassau County Supreme Court by D. Le Roy Dresser, who was President of the old Trust Company of the Republic in the days of the United States Shipbuilding Company, to recover $990,000 from the Mercantile Trust Company, James H. Hyde, John J. McCook, C. B. Alexander, William C. Gulliver, Charles C. Deming, Alvin W. Krech, and John W. Young, on account of the experiences of Mr. Dresser in his shipbuilding deals with the various defendants, came up for trial before Justice Carr, at Mineola, L. I., yesterday. But once more the defendants, through their counsel, sought for delay, and as a result a long argument was made as to whether the case shall go over to the October term of the court. Justice Carr will give his decision this morning.
The argument, however, was productive of some interesting passages between frank Sullivan Smith, who, with Frederick W. Frost, represents Mr. Dresser, and the lawyers for the defense. The attorneys of record for the Mercantile Trust Company are Byrne & Cutcheon, and Samuel Untermyer, who pushed through the original receivership action against the United States Shipbuilding Company, is associated with them. Francis L. Wellman appeared as counsel for John W. Young and for the defendants McCook, Deming, and Alexander of the law firm Alexander & Green, through which largely the United States Shipbuilding promotion was organized.
Mr. Wellman said that he was on the verge of nervous prostration as the result of his strenuous Winter's law work and that it was imperative that he should go abroad. Furthermore, according to Mr. Wellman, negotiations looking to a settlement had been in progress as recently as Sunday night, and he was quite unprepared to go on with the case, having expected that these would result successfully.
Mr. Untermyer explained that he had important personal engagements of a legal nature in London and must positively sail on the 4th or 5th of this month. He declared furthermore that Henry C. Demming, brother of the defendant, C. C. Deming, and formerly President of the mercantile Trust Company, was in Paris, broken in health, and that the case couldn't go to trial without his testimony. Finaly Mr. Cutcheon assured the court that he couldn't go to trial without Mr. Untermyer.
When Mr. Smith replied he took up first the matter of the settlement negotiations. He said that two branches had been developed, in one of which, relatively unimportant to Mr. Dresser, there was a prospect of coming together. The other, said Mr. Smith, had never been in any shape to justify a conclusion that a settlement was near, adequate to excuse counsel for being unprepared for trial. So far as H. C. Deming was concerned, Mr. Smith said that he had met him in Paris only two weeks ago a well-appearing man and he offered to stipulate that H. C. Deming had no part in the negotiations with Mr. Dresser.
The action is the first of a series of eight suits by Mr. Dresser against the same defendants. It is based on a contention of fraud running back to the time when the securities of the United States Shipbuilding Company were in process of being underwritten here and abroad. The French underwriting did not materialize, and Mr. Dresser says in his complaint that the defendants induced him as President of the Trust Company of the Republic to have that concern guarantee notes which he and Mr. Nixon gave to carry the underwriting pending the French subscriptions, which it is alleged the defendants knew had failed. Subsequently Mr. Dresser had to turn over securities that he values at $990,000 to make the Trust Company good.
The other seven actions involve about $860,000 and are underwriting suits. Mr. Dresser has promised to tell some interesting things about the finances of the United States Shipbuilding Company when the suits at last get to trial.
