Chapter 14: Catch-22
The Wheels of Justice Grind Slow but Grind Fine ~ Sun Tzu
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Release Date: September 24, 2024
Although the court of public opinion had firmly decided Aimee was Mary Martha's illegitimate daughter and should be given a birth certificate stating such, as 1928 turned into 1929, the New York court system was still grappling with the issue of jurisdiction.
Did they have the authority to grant Aimee's request for a declaratory judgment or not?
Mary Martha's attorney, William Jerome, insisted no authority existed for a declaratory judgment and repeatedly called for dismissal. And when the Supreme Court finally did make a determination and refused to dismiss the suit, William appealed that decision to the next highest court, the Supreme Court Appellate Division.
On April 5, 1929, the Appellate Division of the New York Supreme Court upheld the lower court decision — Aimee had the right to request a declaratory judgment, the Supreme Court had the jurisdiction to hear that request, and the case against Mary Martha Parker Taylor, her alleged mother, would not be dismissed.
In speaking for the majority, Justice James O'Malley noted that, although Aimee had never been acknowledged by Mary Martha or her family as a blood relative, if her claim were true, then after Mary Martha’s death, Aimee would have a “remainder interest” in the estates of her great-grandfather, James Parker, as well as Richard Tucker Parker, her grandfather, and also in a deed of trust in which Mary Martha had a life estate. 1
But, if Mary Martha died before providing Aimee with a birth certificate, then, it didn’t matter if the relationship existed or not, there was no one alive who could provide the official recognition required for Aimee to claim her inheritance.
Today we’d call this paradox a “Catch-22”, referencing the 1961 novel of the same name by Joseph Heller, but in 1929, it was simply an impossible no-win situation.
In concluding the majority decision, O’Malley reminded everyone that the court wasn't concerned with Aimee's ability to prove her case but merely with the question of whether or not she should be allowed to prove it and if she did prove it, if the court should enter a judgment.
And to those questions, he and his colleagues, P.J. Dowling and J. Finch, unequivocally determined the answer was yes.
Although William Jerome filed yet another motion to dismiss, the writing was on the wall — Aimee would have her day in court.
On May 17, Joseph Cohen, filed a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of New York seeking a declaratory judgment that his client, Aimee Henry Morecroft, was the illegitimate daughter of Mary Martha Parker Taylor and that Mary Martha should be compelled by the courts to provide Aimee with a birth certificate.
Laid out in the complaint were several claims which, through her attorney, Mary Martha was required to either admit to or deny based upon “information or belief”.
A month later, Mary Martha did just that in what local papers called "one of the most remarkable documents ever prepared for the New York Supreme Court." 2
Of the ten claims made by Aimee and her legal team, Mary Martha denied parts or all of eight of the ten claims and refused to admit to any.
She denied knowing anything about Aimee’s birth certificate and baptismal records, or that she was the only witness to Aimee’s birth still alive.
And she denied outright four other claims — that Allen Thorndike Rice was Aimee's father, that she had ever told Aimee she would always have the stain of sin upon her, and that Aimee, “by virtue of her parentage is entitled to membership in the Colonial Dames of America, Daughters of the American Revolution, and that she is entitled to legal recognition of her noted forebearers”.
But, perhaps most telling — and convicting —was that Mary Martha neither admitted nor denied she was Aimee's mother or that Aimee had been born in Rothesay in June of 1891.
Like so many other things Mary Martha found uncomfortable, she simply refused to acknowledge those claims existed.
Aimee's case seeking a declaratory judgment to compel Mary Martha to admit they were blood-related would drag on for another 15 months, with Joseph Cohen seeking relief, the courts making decisions, and Mary Martha's legal team seeking dismissals.
By August of 1929, however, that legal team no longer included William Jerome.
The retirement of William Travers Jerome from active law practice was indicated yesterday in an announcement that the old partnership of Jerome & Rand had been dissolved and the firm's offices and business taken over by a group now known as Tibbets, Lewis & Rand. Mr. Jerome will retain an office with the firm and act in an advisory capacity. The new partnership includes Harland B. Tibbets, George F. Lewis and Robert C. Rand, with. Victor Morawetz, Murray D. Welch and William S. Savage associated with them. 3
About the time Harland B. Tibbetts took over Mary Martha's legal team from the retired William Jerome, Wall Street brokers and American investors began seeing increased instability in the stock market, as detailed in an October 19, 1929 article in New York Times:
"It was remarked yesterday afternoon that, so far as those who are friendly to the market are concerned, trading should have been stopped at 2 o'clock over the last fortnight. They at least would have been better off. It has been the final hour, on each of the recent declines, in which the greatest damage had been done. All the wide declines were established yesterday in the final hour of trading. At 2 o'clock, stocks looked healthy, and while somewhat uneven, they were moving along quietly. At the end of the next hour, they were disheveled and bedraggled." 4
Among those stocks seeing some of the most significant declines during the third week in October of 1929 were American and Foreign Power, United States Steel, General Electric, Eastman Kodak, Consolidated Gas, Johns-Mansville, Montgomery Ward, Republic Iron and Steel, North American, Simmons Company, Westinghouse Electric, and Standard Gas — most of which Mary Martha was heavily invested in through trusts, the most common vehicle for generational transfer of wealth.
By October 25, however, at least some analysts were optimistic, if not hopeful, that the worst of the market's instability was behind them. Again, from the New York Times:
"It is probable that if the stockholders of the country’s foremost corporations had not been calmed by the attitude of leading bankers and the subsequent rally, the business of the country would have been seriously affected." 5
History would prove they’d spoken too soon.
The following Monday, the Dow dropped nearly 13 percent. And on Tuesday — what came to be called "Black Tuesday" — it took another drop of nearly 21 percent, leading to the highest day of trading in stock market history and the loss of an estimated 14 billion dollars in investments.
The stock market collapsed, and the Great Depression was on. That an illegitimate child and her wealthy socialite mother were still in an extended court battle, was the last thing about which anyone cared.
Copyright 2024 Lori Olson White
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Chapter End Notes
1 Morecroft v. Taylor, 234 N.Y.S. 2, 225 Appellate Division 562 (NY App. Div. 1929).
2 "Heiress Denies Parentage in Will Suit", Syracuse Journal, Syracuse, NY, June 17, 1929.
3 "Jerome Quitting the Law”, New York Times, New York, Ny, August 1, 1929, P. 46.
4 “Topics in Wall Street”, New York Times, New York, NY, October 19, 1929.
5 “Thousands of Accounts Wiped Out, with Traders in Dark as to Events on Exchange”, New York Times, New York, NY, October 25, 1929, P. 1.
That she'd won her riht to pursue the case and might eventually stake a claim to an inheritance that suddenly disappears in the stock market crash! What a plot twist.
I have a question that as a genealogist, you might be able to answer. I thought I remembered that Aimee went abroad some years back ( I might be mistaken). My question is: How did the US issue passports back then? What documents did they require? Today you need a birth certificate to get a passport.