Board of Directors v. Board of Trustees

BELSON, Senior Judge:

I

This case presented the trial court with the difficult task of construing an 1828 Act of Congress that is far from clear. The statute incorporated a board of five trustees to constitute a corporation known as the Washington City Orphan Asylum, and assigned different authority and responsibilities to that board, appellee here, and to a second board, a board of directors and managers, our appellant. After working in apparent harmony for over a century and a half, the two boards fell into disagreement, with the result that the board of trustees has purported to oust the…