1. Defendant beneficiary's counter-claim challenges not only the conduct of the defendant bank, executor and trustee under the will of the deceased, in voting shares he owned at his death in the bank and in another institution in favor of a merger, and exchanging the shares for the new (merged) stock, but also the propriety of the trustee in continuing to hold the new stock thereafter. It calls upon the trustee to account for the entire period of the trust, and this will necessarily involve the correctness, accuracy and sufficiency of the account filed by the trustee some six years after the exchange of the shares and not yet judicially passed upon. Held, interrogatories by the counter-claiming beneficiary relating to the issue of preferred stock by the defendant bank at or prior to the filing of its first intermediate account as trustee, are proper.
2. Interrogatories as to whether defendant trustee held any stock in the two banking institutions that were merged, as trustee of any other trust estates than the one here in question, between the time of the testator's death and the filing of its first intermediate account; or whether such stock was voted in favor of the merger; or whether defendant trustee's officers and directors held stock in the defendant bank during this period, held, proper. These matters are relevant and material in passing on the question of the good faith and honest exercise of judgment by the trustee in regard to the estate, and on the question as to whether the officers and directors of the defendant trustee were acting in their own interest or in the interest of the beneficiaries of the trust when they voted for the merger, for taking in the new stock, and for holding such stock.
3. Interrogatories as to whether there were any other exchanges of stocks or other securities resulting from corporate mergers, and what stocks were involved and what was received in exchange therefor, were material and proper. The beneficiaries have a right to full and complete information from the trustee as to the conduct and administration of the trust. There is nothing in the intermediate account of the trustee to show that no exchanges were made other than those set forth in the account or the accompanying schedules.
PER CURIAM.
The order appealed from will be affirmed, for the reasons stated in the opinion filed in the Court of Chancery by Vice-Chancellor Buchanan.
For affirmance — THE CHIEF-JUSTICE, PARKER, CASE, BODINE, DONGES, HEHER, PERSKIE, PORTER, COLIE, DEAR, WELLS, WOLFSKEIL, RAFFERTY, HAGUE, THOMPSON, JJ. 15.
For reversal — None.