R. H. Herron Co. v. Superior Court

HARRISON, J.

The petitioner herein recovered judgment in the superior court in and for San Francisco, August 31, 1901, against the Grant Oil Company, a corporation, for the sum of $1,510, upon which an execution was issued to the sheriff of San Benito County, and that officer levied upon certain property of the judgment debtor, and advertised the same to be sold September 13th. August 17, 1901, certain creditors of the Grant Oil Company filed a petition in the superior court for San Francisco, in accordance with the provisions of the Insolvent Act of 1895, praying that the said Grant Oil Company be adjudged an insolvent debtor, and thereafter such proceedings were had in the matter that on September 6th the superior court made and entered its order adjudging the corporation an insolvent debtor, and appointing September 16th as the day for the creditors to prove their debts against said debtor and choose an assignee for it. A copy of this order was served upon the sheriff of

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San Benito County, and by reason thereof he refused to sell the property of the debtor, levied upon by him as aforesaid. The petitioner asks for a writ of prohibition to prevent the superior court from proceeding with the election of an assignee for said insolvent debtor, or otherwise assuming jurisdiction in the matter of said insolvency, upon the ground that by virtue of the act of Congress passed in 1898 establishing a uniform system of bankruptcy throughout the United States, the Insolvent Act of this state was suspended, and the courts of this state have no jurisdiction to entertain the proceedings in insolvency provided for in said Insolvent Act.

The provision in the constitution of the United States conferring upon Congress the power “to establish uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcies throughout the United States,” of necessity makes any act of Congress passed upon that subject the supreme law of the land, and it was at a very early day determined that the effect of such action of Congress is to suspend and supersede the operation of any state law of insolvency whenever there is any conflict between the two. There can be no concurrent jurisdiction in the two sovereignties over the same subject, and, as the people of the several states have yielded to the United States the power to enact laws upon this subject, it follows that when the United States has enacted a law, the power of the state to enforce its own law upon that subject, whether it be similar or different, must yield to what is the supreme law of the land. It has, however, been held in various decisions, beginning with