Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/250/123
Timestamp: 2017-04-30 18:59:45
Document Index: 261771418

Matched Legal Cases: ['§ 9', '§ 2', '§ 257', '§ 386', '§ 15', '§ 388', '§ 1531']

CHESAPEAKE & DELAWARE CANAL CO. v. UNITED STATES. | US Law | LII / Legal Information Institute
Supreme Court aboutsearch liibulletin subscribe previews CHESAPEAKE & DELAWARE CANAL CO. v. UNITED STATES.
250 U.S. 123 (39 S.Ct. 407, 63 L.Ed. 889)
Argued: and Submitted April 17, 1919.
[HTML] Mr. Charles J. Biddle, of Philadelphia, Pa., for plaintiff in error.
If the government were asserting any rights with respect to the conduct of the corporation's affairs, its contracts or its torts, then its rights, duties and privileges would be no greater than those of any other stockholder. Bank of the United States v. Planters' Bank, 9 Wheat. 904, 907, 6 L. Ed. 244. But here the government is pursuing a right to recover, which is not affected by its relation to the corporation as a stockholder. The declaration of the dividends, which is admitted, gave it the status of a creditor of the company, and, thereafter, the right to recover was unaffected by any stockholder relation. To this must be added that the statutes and rules of limitation relate to the remedy to enforce the right, and not to the corporate relation from which the right springs, and that, since these dividends constituted 'public money' applicable to public purposes only, the government in collecting them was acting in its governmental capacity as much as if it were collecting taxes, such as those with which, no doubt, the stock which produced the dividends was purchased. The Circuit Court of Appeals answered this contention in a manner not to be improved upon, saying (223 Fed. 926, 928, 139 C. C. A. 406, 408 L. R. A. 1916B, 734):
They were public records, kept pursuant to constitutional and statutory requirement. Constitution of the United States, Article 1, § 9, cl. 7; Act of Congress, approved September 2, 1789, c. 12, § 2 (
1 Stat. 65); Rev. St. § 257 (Comp. St. § 386); Act of Congress, approved September 30, 1890 (
26 Stat. 504, 511, c. 1126); Act approved July 31, 1894, (c. 174, § 15, 28 Stat. 210 Comp. St. § 388). Thus, their character as public records required by law to be kept, the official character of their contents entered under the sanction of public duty, the obvious necessity for regular contemporaneous entries in them and the reduction to a minimum of motive on the part of public officials and employes to either make false entries or to omit proper ones, all unite to make these books admissible as unusually trustworthy sources of evidence. Gaines v. Relf, 12 How. 472, 570, 13 L. Ed. 1071; Bryan et al. v. Forsyth, 19 How. 334, 338, 15 L. Ed. 674; Post v. Supervisors, 105 U. S. 667, 670, 26 L. Ed. 1204; Oakes v. United States, 174 U. S. 778, 783, 796, 19 Sup. Ct. 864, 43 L. Ed. 1169; Holt v. United States, 218 U. S. 245, 253, 31 Sup. Ct. 2, 54 L. Ed. 1021, 20 Ann. Cas. 1138. Obviously such books are not subject to the rules of restricted admissibility applicable to private account books. The considerations which we have found rendered the books admissible in evidence as tending to prove the truth of the statements of entries contained in them also make them admissible as evidence tending to show that because the receipt of the dividends was not entered in them they were not received and therefore were not paid. The evidence may not be as persuasive in the latter case as in the former, but that it was proper evidence to be submitted to the jury for the determination of its value we cannot doubt. Such books so kept presumptively contained a record of all payments made, and the absence of any entry of payment, where it naturally would have been found if it had been made, was evidence of nonpayment proper for the consideration of the jury. United States v. Teschmaker et al., 22 How. 392, 405, 16 L. Ed. 353; State v. McCormick, 57 Kan. 440, 46 Pac. 777, 57 Am. St. Rep. 341; Bastrop State Bank v. Levy, 106 La. 586, 31 South. 164; Wigmore on Evidence, § 1531, and section 1633, par. 6.