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ON

PRIVATE
CORPORATIONS

SELECTED AND ARRANGED

BY

GEORGE F. CANFIELD
Professor of Law, Columbia University

ASSISTED BY

I. MAURICE WORMSER

Assistant Professor of Law,
University of Illinois

INDIANAPOLIS

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT 1913

BY

THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY.

PREFACE

For several years I have been intending to prepare a collection of cases on the law of private corporations, and when I learned that my former pupil, I. Maurice Wormser, now Assistant Professor of Law in the University of Illinois, had already entered upon a similar work, I concluded that a wise policy of conservation required that we combine our efforts.

Notwithstanding the enormous volume of legislation affecting corporations, which has been enacted during the past fifty years, there remains untouched a large number of common-law principles. These are fundamental-a firm grasp of them, indeed, is essential to a thorough knowledge not only of the common law but also the statutory law of corporations and this grasp can be only acquired by a critical study of the judicial decisions in which these common-law principles were developed and applied.

The present collection contains the more important of these decisions covering all the principal topics, and supplemented by notes of the editors, which, it is believed, will be useful to the student both during his period of study and during his professional career. The object of these notes is, first, to indicate the weight and general trend of authority upon important topics and disputed points; secondly, to facilitate independent research and special study of these topics and disputed points, and, thirdly, these notes have enabled us to reserve the entire body of the text for the important cases and those which, in the opinion of the editors, are best adapted to serve as a basis for analysis and discussion in the class-room.

It gives me great pleasure to acknowledge my indebtedness to my associate, Professor Wormser, for his painstaking and intelligent work in connection with the preparation of the notes and his helpful criticisms and suggestions with respect to the selection and classification of the cases. GEORGE F. Canfield.

Columbia University, September 9th, 1912.

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