Jacob Jesser Benjamin Rosenberg Oscar

These cross-appeals are from an order and judgment allowing plaintiffs' attorneys $80,000 as fees for services and $4,327.77 for expenses incurred in the prosecution of an equity action involving the construction of a voting trust agreement. One ground of defendants' appeal is that the allowance of attorneys' fees is excessive by at least $75,000, while the plaintiffs in their appeal assert that the allowance is inadequate in the sum of $60,000. The amounts involved vest jurisdiction in this court. Art. V. § 3, Constitution of Missouri 1945; § 477.040, RSMo 1959, V.A.M.S. The history and outcome of the principal litigation is set out in Jesser v. Mayfair Hotel, Inc., Mo., 316 S.W.2d 465, but a brief resume may be helpful at this point. The voting trust agreement was made as of January 1, 1943, pursuant to a plan of reorganization of Mayfair Hotel, Inc., a corporation, under orders of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern Judicial District of Missouri. Under the reorganization plan, the previous shareholders were wiped out and the income bondholders of the old company, for each $100 bond, received $60 principal amount of new income bonds and a voting trust certificate for one share of the common stock of the new Mayfair Company. The plan and voting trust agreement required the Mayfair Company to issue and deposit with five voting trustees a total of 14,035 shares of its capital stock. The trustees held the legal title and voting trust certificates were issued by the trustees to the persons entitled ""evidencing their respective interests in that portion of the capital stock of the Company issued to the Voting Trustees for their benefit."" Specific shares were not set aside or identified as being for the use and benefit of particular certificate holders. The trust agreement further provided that the capital stock so deposited by the Mayfair Company should be held for a period of fifteen years and the powers and duties of the trustees with respect thereto were set out in the trust instrument. Mayfair Hotel, Inc., owned and operated Hotel Mayfair in downtown St. Louis and also owned approximately 75 per cent of the capital stock of Lennox Hotel Company, a corporation, which owned and operated Hotel Lennox, also in downtown St. Louis.