The following able argument in the Louisiana Church property case, before the Supreme Court of the State, made by Smith S. Allen, Esq., of Hannibal, Mo., counsel for plaintiffs in error, is not only a part of the history of the case, but too valuable and vital to the great questions at issue to be lost. It may very properly supplement this chapter, as its merits demand a more permanent form than the newspaper columns. It will be perused with interest, especially by the legal profession, and will not be without interest and profit to the general reader.
Edwin Draper and others, }
ex parte petitioners and }
defendants in error. } Error from the Louisiana
} Court of Common Pleas.
Sam’l O. Minor and others, }
plaintiffs in error. }
If the Court please: The extraordinary conduct of part of the ex parte petitioners and defendants in error in this case is perhaps sufficiently disclosed in the written statement of facts filed by plaintiffs, which I have already drawn up and placed on the files of the Court. This part of my subject I will, however, with the indulgence of the Court, consider more fully hereafter.
This case, on the face of the ex parte petition, appears to be an application by seven of the trustees of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, at Louisiana, Missouri, made to the Louisiana Court of Common Pleas, to have two pretended vacancies in that Board of Trustees filled by appointment of that Court. These seven ex parte petitioners on the face of the petition are Edwin Draper, John S. Markley, John W. Allen, Samuel O. Minor, John Shurmur, Joseph Charleville and Ivy Zumwalt.
But in fact this is not the application of three of the pretended petitioners, to-wit, Samuel O. Minor, Ivy Zumwalt and John W. Allen; on the contrary, these three gentlemen are indignant at the proceedings. As evidence of this I will here state that they became, and are, parties to the motion to set aside the order of the Court below appointing Strother and Hunter to fill the pretended vacancies. By their affidavit, appended to said motion, they and each of them solemnly swear that said ex parte petition was gotten up, and their names used therein as petitioners, without their knowledge or consent and against their will; and that the same was filed and the unjust and illegal action of the Court below had thereon without their knowledge or consent.