Chancery or equity court started in England in the late
1300s and over the centuries developed a separate structure similar to
that of the so-called law courts, and certain types of cases became
associated with one or the other. By the time America was settled, it
was established that criminal prosecutions and civil suits for money
damages were legal cases, while probate, adoptions, and civil suits for
injunctions were equity cases. One of the main distinctions between
them was that there were no juries in chancery.
1: Paragraph 23 A trustee is a person who has agreed to hold or
manage property for someone else's benefit, and anything to do with
trusts is within the equity court's jurisdiction. The idea of a
corporation is that its directors are trustees for its stockholders,
managing the money they paid for their shares for their benefit, so any
litigation over corporate affairs is a chancery case.
1: Paragraph 24 The federal District Courts have both legal and
equitable jurisdiction, but only in cases where there is federal
jurisdiction over the subject matter, of course, and most states have
similarly combined the two courts into one, although some states
maintain a distinction between the law division and equity division of
the court. In Delaware the Superior Court has jurisdiction over cases
that are legal only and the Chancery Court has jurisdiction over every
case where either the subject matter or the relief sought includes any
equitable component.
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