Source: https://www.legalcrystal.com/case/80038/planters-bank-vs-sharp
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 04:52:32+00:00

Document:
3d. Because the plaintiffs have a right by law to deal in promissory notes, bills of exchange &c.;, secured by charter.
corporation or its rights than in that of an individual; but rather that its charter as a public grant is not to be construed beyond its natural import. 8 Pet. 738; 28 U. S. 3 Pet. 289; 29 U. S. 4 Pet. 168, 29 U. S. 514 . The inviolability of contracts, however, and the faithful protection of vested rights, are due to the one no less than the other, and are both involved in the present inquiry, so far as affecting, by way of principle or precedent, all the various and vast interests of this kind existing over the whole Union.
Doing business with these powers, amounting, as it has been repeatedly settled, to a contract in the charter for the use of them ( see cases in the West River Bridge, at this term), the bank, on 24 May, 1839, took the promissory note on which the present suit was instituted and, on 10 June, 1842, transferred it to the United States Bank, having first commenced this action on it 11 October, 1841.
The same rule prevailed in the civil law under the term " bona mobilia. " 1 P.Wms. 267. And by that law as well as the common law, promissory notes or choses in action come under the category of movable goods or personal property, as they accompany the person. 2 Bl.Comm. 384, 398.
The bank was allowed, also, by the seventeenth section "to discount bills of exchange and notes," and in truth promissory notes usually constitute a large portion of the property of such institutions. Such notes also, not only by general usage and established forms, are in most cases made to run to banks or their order, and must be expected to run so when the banks please; but it is expressly provided by the twenty-second section of this charter that "it shall not be lawful for said bank to discount any note or notes which shall not be made payable and negotiable at said bank," &c.; And again, by an amendatory act accepted by the bank it was provided, on 9 December, 1831, "that such promissory notes shall be made payable and negotiable on their face at some bank or branch bank."
To reach this end, it is not indispensable to hold that corporations in modern times possess numerous incidental powers, equal to those of individuals, as was once the doctrine. Kyd on Corp. 108; 2 Kent Comm. 281, and cases in those treatises, but seems now in some respects overruled. Earle v. Bank of Augusta, 13 Pet. 519, 38 U. S. 587 , 38 U. S. 153 ; 6 U. S. 2 Cranch 167; 25 U. S. 12 Wheat. 64. But merely to hold, as it often has been in late years, that what is necessary and proper to be done to carry into effect express grants, and which is nowhere forbidden, may in most cases be lawful.
&c.; And such a pledge or transfer was held there to be valid.
It is sometimes stated with plausibility that states may pass insolvent laws suspending or taking away actions on contracts where the debtor goes into insolvency, and hence, by analogy, can do it here. But there, another remedy is still given on the contract before the commissioners of insolvency, and a payment is made pro rata as far as means exist. Here, there is no other remedy given or any part payment made. Indeed it seems that a forfeiture of all right to recover on the note in any way is inflicted here as a penalty for making that very transfer which the bank before, by the act of incorporation, as well as by the note itself, was authorized to make. Again, state insolvent laws, if made, like this law, to apply to past contracts and stop suits on them, have been held not to be constitutional except so far as they discharge the person from imprisonment or in some other way affect only the remedy. When so restricted, they do not impair the obligation of the contract itself, because the obligation is left in full force and actionable, and future property, as well as present, subjected to its payment, and the body exonerated only as a matter connected merely with the form of the remedy. Cook v. Moffat, 5 How. 316, and cases there cited. The case in 8 Robinson 421 appears also to have been one on a note executed after the prohibitory law, and not, as here, before. But where future acquisitions are attempted to be exonerated, and the discharge extended to the debt or contract itself, if done by the states, it must not, as here, apply to past contracts or it is held to impair their obligation. Ogden v. Saunders, 12 Wheat. 213; Sturges v. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat. 122; 19 U. S. 6 Wheat. 131; 2 Kent Comm. 392; Bronson v. Kinzie, 1 How. 311; McCracken v. Hayward, 2 How. 608; 1 Cowen 321; 16 Johns. 237; 1 Ohio, 236; Cook v. Moffat, 5 How. 308, 46 U. S. 314 . Congress alone can do this as to prior contracts by means of an express permission in the Constitution to pass uniform laws on the subject of bankruptcy, and which laws, when not restrained by any Constitution or clause like this as to states impairing contracts, may in that way be made to reach past obligations.
between individuals, or between them and corporations. But it will usually be found that these are such laws only as relate to future contracts, or if to past ones, relate to modes of proceeding in courts, to the form of remedy merely, to priority to some classes of creditors, 9 U. S. 5 Cranch 298, to the kind of process, 34 U. S. 9 Pet. 319; 23 U. S. 10 Wheat. 51, to the length of the statute of limitations, 19 U. S. 6 Wheat. 131; 2 Mason 168; 3 Johns.Ch. 190; 17 U. S. 4 Wheat. 200; 42 U. S. 1 How. 315, to exempting the body from imprisonment, 17 U. S. 4 Wheat. 200, or tools and household goods from seizure, 16 Johns. 244; 42 U. S. 1 How. 15; 11 Martin 730, or affecting some privilege attached to the person or territory, Story on Confl. of Laws 339 &c.;, and not to the terms or obligations of any part of the contract itself, Cook v. Moffat, 5 How. 295; Towne v. Smith, 1 Woodb. & Minot 132; 7 Greenl. 337; 3 Burge on Col. & For. Law 234, 1046.
"a corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law. Being a mere creature of the law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it, either expressly or as incidental to its very existence. "

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