BIG CLAIM FAILS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXVI, Issue 20252, 11 May 1929, Page 2 (Supplement)

BIG CLAIM FAILS.

MODERN JARNDYCE CASE. AN £8,000,000 LAWSUIT. t « v . i y STORY OF- A CENTURY AGO. An £8,000,000 lawsuit against the famous Astor Estates has been concluded in (lie American Courts, the case, in which 1000 claimants were concerned, being dismissed. The whole claim made a romance of business; it began in 1815 with the friendship of the young founder of the Astor business and a natron named Emerick. Descendants of Emerick claimed that £8,000,000 of Astor property was the accumulation of a Trust fund left- with tlie first Astor by the first Emerick, to mature in 1905; and they relied on a report of a long-lost will being found in an old hide trunk. Like the claimants of the Jarndyco estate in " Bleak. House/' thev receive nothing. ' An action, brought bv the heirs and next-of-kin of John Nicholas Emerick, for two-thirds proceeds of the estate of the first John Jacob Astor, estimated at about £8,000,000, was dismissed by the Federal Court. It was alleged, when the action was started, that this sum constituted a trust, made in 1815, by John Nicholas Emerick for the benefit of his descendants. Further, it was alleged that the original John Jacob Astor was the trustee. Hence the claim on the estates which

had descended from the first John Jacob Astor.

Plaintiffs were descendants of John Nicholas Emerick. Representatives of the Astor estates maintained that there was no proof of any such trust agreement having been made. On the other hand, the Emerick family claimed that the existence of a trust" agreement was shown by some old papers which had belonged to John Nicholas Emerick. This American " Jnrndyce case" arose more than 100 years ago. Those interested as claimants are computed to number far more than did the claimants in " Bleak House." And they receive in the end what Dickens' characters received —nothing!

Ono report savs over 1000 heirs of the Emericks of the days of King George 111. were concerned to share in the fortune, in case of the claimants winning their suit. They alleged that the Emeriek of the Waterloo year, 1815, had mot (lie John Jacob Astor of that day—who founded the millionaire house, and died in 1843—when John Jacob was a povertystricken youth. Young Emerick, the claim set out, taught Astor to be a clerk and business man, made him a partner on 30 per cent, share terms, and finally appointed him first trustee of. Emerick estates—the trust to be carried on till the year 1905, and the proceeds to be then divided among the Emerick descendants. For the Emerick claimants it was argued that certain Astors, after the first John Jacob, bad failed to divulge separate growth of the Emerick trust moneys and estates—and so, in time, the Emerick

property came to be treated as Astor property. A sensational part of the claim was the assertion that John Nicholas Emgrick's will of 100 years ago had been lost, with other documentary heirlooms. But these were, said the claimants' counsel, later found in an old hide-covered chest, and it was maintained that the documents would prove the Emerick-Astor partnership of over 100 years ago, and the fact that Emerick left his fortune to Astor in trust for the 20th century Emericks. Ono of the contentions of the Astor counsel was that tho suit was now being brought too long after the alleged " trust" transaction to come under any Statute. Some of tho most valuable property in the heart of New York City is said to have been concerned in tnis claim.