fore us have been framed without adequate regard to these established rules of practice.

Question No. 1 is too general and abstract, its relation to the controversy being indirect and problematical. “In all cases of mutual debts or mutual credits between the estate of a bankrupt and a creditor the account shall be stated and one debt shall be set off against the other, and the balance only shall be allowed or paid." Bankruptcy Act, § 68 (a); 11 U. S. C. § 108. The precept, framed on the example of ancient laws across the seas (4 Anne, c. 17, § 11; 5 Geo. II, c. 30, § 28), is now applicable by force of statute to the liquidation of estates in bankruptcy. We are asked to announce broadly whether it is applicable with similar inclusiveness to proceedings to reorganize a railroad, though the question tells us nothing as to the facts behind the controversy. "The court has repeatedly held that it will not answer questions of objectionable generality." White v. Johnson, supra; United States v. Worley, 281 U. S. 339, 340; United States v. Mayer, supra. Without a showing of the facts an answer to this question would declare a mere abstraction which might seem too narrow or too broad thereafter when the facts were shown forth. One must see the controversy in its setting before the implications of a ruling can be prefigured with assurance.

Question No. 2 is dependent by its terms upon an affirmative answer to question No. 1. It is open, however, to objections on its own account. Like question No. 1 it is far too general in its range. Moreover, it is silent as to facts which a court of equity should know before hazarding an answer. A proceeding to reorganize is not a bankruptcy, though an amendment to the bankruptcy act creates and regulates the remedy. From the fact without more that such a proceeding has been initiated, one cannot know that it will be necessary to have recourse to § 68,

which was meant in its enactment to prescribe the rule of set-off upon a distribution of the assets. That stage of administration, or the analogous stage of a revision of the debts, may never be attained in a proceeding to reorganize, though a petition has been approved and trustees have been appointed. If a plan of reorganization is not proposed or accepted, or, being proposed and accepted, is not confirmed by the court within a reasonable time, the whole proceeding may be dismissed, § 77 (c) (7), the title to the estate thus reverting to the debtor. By that time there may even be ability to pay demands as they mature. What is done at the beginning amounts to little more than a provisional sequestration to give protection for the future.

The right of set-off must fit itself to these procedural conditions. It is not susceptible of definition in the abstract without reference to the time or occasion of the controversy or the relation of the suit to the primary proceeding. Irrespective of the acceptance or confirmation of a plan, the trustees must have the power to gather in the assets and keep the business going. To exercise that power, they may find it necessary to sue, and the suit may turn upon the right of set-off, as it does in the case at hand. In a suit for such a purpose, a suit collateral to the main proceeding and initiated at a time when the outcome of that proceeding is still unknown and unknowable, § 68 of the statute does not control the disposition of the controversy ex proprio vigore. It governs, if at all, by indirection and analogy according to the circumstances. The rule to be accepted for the purpose of such a suit is that enforced by courts of equity, which differs from the rule in bankruptcy chiefly in its greater flexibility, the rule in bankruptcy being framed in adaptation to standardized conditions, and that in equity varying with the needs of the occasion, though remaining

constant, like the statute, in the absence of deflecting forces. Scott v. Armstrong, 146 U. S. 499, 507; North Chicago Rolling Mill Co. v. St. Louis Ore & Steel Co., 152 U. S. 596, 615; Scammon v. Kimball, 92 U. S. 362, 366; Sawyer v. Hoag, 17 Wall. 610, 622; Clark Bros. & Co. v. Pou, 20 F. (2d) 74, 77, 78; Greene v. Darling (Story, J.), 5 Mason 201, 210; Gray v. Rollo, 18 Wall. 629, 632; Dade v. Irwin's Executor, 2 How. 383, 390, 391; Studley v. Boylston National Bank, 229 U. S. 523, 528, 529; Pond v. Harwood, 139 N. Y. 111, 119; 34 N. E. 768; Frank v. Mercantile National Bank, 182 N. Y. 264, 268; 74 N. E. 841; Lockwood v. Beckwith, 6 Mich. 168, 175; Story, Equity Jurisprudence, 14th ed., §§ 1871, 1872.

The defects of the certificate, its incomplete disclosure of the facts conditioning an answer, are thus exhibited in clear relief. "Insolvency" in proceedings to reorganize (§ 77) is often very different from "insolvency" in ordinary bankruptcy. § 1 (15). There is at least a possibility that at times the difference may be great enough to vary the resulting equities. When things are called by the same name it is easy for the mind to slide into an assumption that the verbal identity is accompanied in all its sequences by identity of meaning. A court of equity in allowing or rejecting set-off will not be guilty of that fallacy. To know "the justice of the particular case" (Scott v. Armstrong, supra; Story, Equity Jurisprudence, supra), one must know the case in its particulars. More concretely, one must know the value of the assets, the temporary or permanent character of the debtor's inability to pay its debts as they mature, the liens, if there are any, superior to the bonds in controversy, the probability of an understanding that the bonds, though unmatured, would be used to cancel the deposits, all the circumstances, in brief, that might affect the judgment of the chancellor in weighing the competing equities of the

Opinion of the Court.

298 U.S.

interested factions and shaping his decree accordingly. We have no thought at this time to foreshadow the result of an exploring expedition directed to those ends. When all the facts are known, they may be found to offer no excuse for a departure from the rule in bankruptcy which, as indicated already, is generally, even if not always, the rule in equity as well. They may point, on the other hand, to the need for an exception, or may even lead to a decree in the nature of a compromise, the moneys being paid into the registry of the court to abide its future action. A decision balancing the equities must await the exposure of a concrete situation with all its qualifying incidents. What we disclaim at the moment is a willingness to put the law into a strait-jacket by subjecting it to a pronouncement of needless generality.

Question No. 3 is so framed as not to call for an answer unless an affirmative answer is given to questions Nos. 1 and 2.

Our conclusion as to the defective form of the certificate is borne out in a striking way by the concession of the parties. Before the argument on the questions, plaintiffs and defendant joined in moving us for an order to bring up the whole case. That motion was denied. Nothing in the nature of the controversy called for a writ of certiorari in advance of a decision by the court of intermediate appeal. The significant thing, however, is that in briefs submitted on that motion both parties admitted that the second question was defective. The plaintiffs said: the statement "is not sufficiently complete to enable this court to answer the second question as applied to this case." The defendant made a like objection. Plaintiffs and defendant fortified their general criticism by the enumeration of particular defects.

The certificate is

Dismissed.

Opinion of the Court.

ZIMMERN ET AL. v. UNITED STATES.

CERTIORARI TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIFTH CIRCUIT.

No. 766. Argued April 3, 1936.-Decided April 27, 1936.

An order made by a district judge on his own motion during the term at which a decree has been entered, reciting the need for an amendment of the decree and extending the term to a future day for the declared purpose of allowing such amendment, without specifying the change in contemplation, has the effect of suspending the operation of the decree so that no appeal can be taken from it until it has been amended or confirmed. P. 169. 79 F. (2d) 703, reversed.

CERTIORARI, 297 U. S. 701, to review a judgment dismissing an appeal.

Mr. Lawrence Koenigsberger for petitioners.

Mr. Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., with whom Solicitor General Reed, Assistant Attorney General Jackson, and Messrs. Sewall Key and S. E. Blackham were on the brief, for the United States.

MR. JUSTICE CARDOZO delivered the opinion of the Court.

The question in this case is whether the petitioners appealed to the Circuit Court of Appeals within the time prescribed by law.

The United States brought suit to set aside a deed by Samuel Zimmern to his wife, and another deed, in which the wife joined, to his children, a separate parcel of real estate being the subject of each. At the time of the conveyance Samuel Zimmern was indebted to the complainant for a deficiency of income taxes duly assessed against him. The deeds were attacked upon the ground that they