Rounds qui tam v. JS

Geauga Co., Ohio, Court of Common Pleas, 10 February 1837

Historical Introduction

In February 1837, Samuel Rounds, a resident of Painesville, Ohio, initiated six separate legal actions against JS, Sidney Rigdon, and four junior officers of the Kirtland Safety Society. In November 1836, JS and other church leaders approved a constitution to organize and govern the Kirtland Safety Society Bank, likely hoping to benefit the local economy and provide financial aid to the church. Unsure whether they would be able to receive a charter for a bank from the state legislature, they altered the original articles organizing the bank to establish instead a joint stock association called the Kirtland Safety Society Anti-Banking Company. In January 1837, this “anti-banking company” began issuing notes, signed by JS and Rigdon as officers of the society.

Rounds’s legal actions were based on an Ohio statute that granted private citizens the right to sue persons acting as officers of unauthorized banks. The penalty was $1,000, which would be divided equally between the party who brought the action and the state. The suits against the four junior officers were concluded in their favor that summer.

The qui tam lawsuits against JS and Rigdon were brought to trial in October 1837, months after the Kirtland Safety Society closed its doors amid a nationwide financial panic. The jury decided in favor of the plaintiff in both cases, after which execution of the judgment for the Rigdon case was sought and partially satisfied. Rounds assigned his half of the judgments for both cases to Grandison Newell, the other half of the judgments still belonging to the state of Ohio. Newell in turn assigned his portion of the judgments to William Marks and Oliver Granger, agents of JS, for $1,600. The combination of the approximately $700 partial satisfaction of judgment and the $1,600 assignment effectively paid judgments for both cases in full.

When Marks and Granger paid Newell for the judgment in 1838, they failed to make the payment part of the court record; therefore, court records indicated that only a portion of the judgment had been satisfied.10 The oversight allowed Newell to proceed against JS’s assets as though he had not received payment in full. With the assistance of Henry Holcomb, Newell revived the judgment in 1860. For further information on the revived judgment, see Rounds for the use of the State of Ohio as well as Himself v. JS in Introduction to Holcomb Administrator of the Estate of JS.

Calendar of Documents

This calendar lists all known documents created by or for the court, whether extant or not. It does not include versions of documents created for other purposes, though those versions may be listed in footnotes. In certain cases, especially in cases concerning unpaid debts, the originating document (promissory note, invoice, etc.) is listed here. Note that documents in the calendar are grouped with their originating court. Where a version of a document was subsequently filed with another court, that version is listed under both courts.