In the Matter of The Estate of Mary Killan, Deceased, etc. the order discharging the administrator, even though either or both orders were affected by fraud (Matter of Randall, 152 N. Y. 508; Sanders v. Soutter, 126 N. Y. 193). It would be a novel proceeding for a surrogate, on the petitioner's application, to enter upon the trial of a question of fact whether he or the five cousins, who have received the money, are the sole next of kin of the deceased. That very question he tried and decided once before, and his judgment remains in full force, and is a complete protection to the administrator, as this court in principle has just decided (Platt v. N. Y. & S. B. R'y, 170 N. Y. 451). If the claimant has any case at all it is clear that he has mistaken his remedy, and has adopted a method of procedure that cannot be tolerated in the administration of estates, and this would be so even though his right to intervene is discretionary, as his counsel claims, since the discretion, if it exists under the law, was exercised in his favor by the surrogate, and he was permitted to come into the original proceeding. We have seen that at least three distinct remedies were open to the claimant, if he is in fact entitled to the estate of the deceased as her sole next of kin. Those remedies were: First, a motion to open the former decree. Secondly, an appeal from that decree; and, thirdly, to invoke the jurisdiction of a court of equity in regard to the whole controversy by an action in which the five distributees could be made parties and could be decreed to restore the fund distributed to them if the claim of the petitioner should be established. But it seems that, for some reason, no remedy will answer the purpose of the claimant unless he is permitted to entertain his independent proceeding which ignores all that has been done as absolutely void, although the administrator has been discharged from his trust after having distributed the estate that came to his hands in accordance with the decree of a court of competent jurisdiction. No one questions the proposition that the administrator was bound to obey that decree, and it is a In the Matter of The Estate of Mary Killan, Deceased, etc. universal rule that a trustee who acts in obedience to a decree or judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction is protected from any future personal attacks by that decree. In this case the decree of distribution is a shield and protection to the administrator and to the five distributees until it is vacated or set aside, and if that is so this petitioner has no right to attack the administrator in this independent and collateral proceeding. The administrator being bound to obey the decree, it would be quite absurd to hold that it is no protection to him, although upon its face it is regular, but that he must respond to new claimants from time to time as they may appear. Assuming all the facts stated in the claimant's petition to be true, he can accomplish nothing in this proceeding. He must first get rid of the order discharging the administrator and the decree directing distribution. It is not enough to say that he was not a party to this proceeding so long as the court had jurisdiction over the fund, the administrator and the distributees. The court could have made a complete and binding decree in the claimant's absence, since the very question before it was with respect to the persons constituting the next of kin of the deceased. These orders did not conclude the petitioner in the sense that he may not be heard in the proper court, in the proper proceeding, but they protect the administrator and the distributees until reversed or vacated. It is very obvious that the petitioner must invoke the broad powers of a court possessing general equity jurisdiction in order that he may compel the cousins, who are the distributees of the fund, to restore it to him through the coercive powers of that court. Any proceeding to which they are not parties cannot result in any relief to the claimant. There are two things which the petitioner must accomplish before he can recover the fund representing the estate of the deceased: (1) He must have the decree of distribution set aside or vacated and he must have the decree discharging In the Matter of The Estate of Mary Killan, Deceased, etc. the administrator set aside or vacated. (2) He must procure a decree requiring the five cousins to make restitution of a fund paid to them under an error of fact involved in the finding of the surrogate that they, instead of the claimant, were the sole next of kin. A Surrogate's Court has no power to do any of these things, since they belong to, and are part of, the functions of a court with general equity jurisdiction. I cannot concur in the judgment about to be rendered in this case for reasons that are very obvious. I cannot believe that the decree of distribution made by the surrogate and obeyed by the administrator is, as it is claimed to be, void as against this claimant or any one else. I cannot believe that it is legally possible to have two or more conflicting decrees of distribution all in force at the same time, one distributing the estate to the five cousins and the other to this claimant. I cannot believe that an administrator who has distributed an estate that has come to his hands in exact accordance with the decree of a competent court and has been discharged from his trust can be attacked years afterward by a new claimant, at least so long as the former decree and discharge are in full force. In other words, I cannot believe that a trustee and the sureties upon his bond can be held personally liable for the estate that came to his hands and which he has distributed and disposed of under the orders of the court, so long as that decree is in full force. To state the proposition in another way: I do not believe that a trustee or his sureties can be held personally liable for obeying the judgment of the court which he was bound to obey. Cases like this are liable to arise frequently, and such cases must, in the nature of things, have been presented to the courts before, but I doubt if it was ever held by any court in the civilized world that after an administrator had distributed the estate in his hands exactly as the court directed him, that he afterwards could be held personally liable upon the appli In the Matter of The Estate of Mary Killan, Deceased, etc. cation of a new claimant. If the laws of the State authorize or sanction any such procedure the situation would go far to justify some of the grotesque caricatures that novelists and writers of fiction have drawn to describe, or rather distort, those endless and expensive controversies in the courts concerning the distribution of the estates of deceased persons. It is proper to observe before closing the discussion that this drastic law is to be made in a case over which this court has no jurisdiction. I have already called attention to the circumstance that there was no question before the surrogate in this application except an issue of fact formed by the allegation in the claimant's petition and the denial of this allegation by the administrator. The issue thus presented called for an inquiry as to whether this claimant was in fact the brother of the deceased. The decision of the Appellate Division is unanimous and nothing can be reviewed on this appeal except a pure question of law raised by a proper exception. There was no trial for the plain reason that the claimant was not prepared for trial and so the surrogate dismissed the proceeding. The only exception in the case is one filed after the decree was entered on the dismissal of the petition. If the surrogate could have dismissed the proceeding in the exercise of discretion then it is quite clear that the order is not reviewable in this court, since upon its face there is no statement that it was made for want of power. The claimant asked the court for a commission to examine witnesses in Ireland to prove the allegations in his petition and the surrogate refused his application in that respect. A ruling or order of a surrogate granting or refusing an application for a commission to examine witnesses in a foreign country is not reviewable in this court. The right to produce the testimony of witnesses in such a proceeding, otherwise than in open court, subject to cross-examination, is not an absolute one, but is subject to the sound discretion of the In the Matter of The Estate of Mary Killan, Deceased, etc. court (Merchants' National Bank v. Sheehan, 101 N. Y. 176). This court cannot say that the surrogate decided anything amounting to legal error. No one has been able to point out any question of law which the surrogate decided erroneously. If the learned counsel for the claimant desired to bring the case to this court he should have made a formal offer before the surrogate to prove the facts stated in the petition and should have excepted to the ruling case the surrogate refused to hear such proof. I am far from suggesting that such an exception would be good, since for reasons already stated the whole proceeding was misconceived, but nothing less than that could give him any standing in this court. When a case is regularly called in the court in which it is pending and the plaintiff is not prepared to proceed to try the issue of fact involved, and neither gives proof or makes offer of proof otherwise than by an application for a commission to a foreign country of the allegations of fact upon which he relies, the dismissal of his complaint or petition is not a legal error which this court can review. That is the only assignment of error which this appeal presents. It matters not what reasons the surrogate gave for his action. This court is not concerned with the reasons of the trial courts, but with their judgments and orders. It matters not that the surrogate stated in his opinion that this proceeding was unauthorized. The fact still remains that he was not bound to wait until the claimant had gathered his testimony by commission in a foreign country. Moreover, one of the reasons given by the surrogate for dismissing the proceeding was that the claimant had not cited the five cousins who had received the estate under the former decree, so we have before us an order made by a surrogate which he had the power to make in the exercise of discretion, and there is no statement in the order that it was made for want of power to entertain the proceeding. It has been held a great many times in this court that such orders are not reviewable. As the |