Opinion ID: 344807
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: What if Quisenberry wasn't Quisenberry?

Text: 61 In analyzing Perini's first contention, we may treat the indorsements as if they had been proper in form. In other words, we here assume that the checks had been drawn to Jesse D. Quisenberry and indorsed in that form or that they had been drawn as they were and indorsed in a representative capacity. The claim is that the suspicious circumstances surrounding the checks create sufficient uncertainty regarding the authenticity of any such indorsements that the trial court should have assumed they were forged in assessing defendants' motions for summary judgment. 62 The Code creates a presumption that signatures on an item are genuine. § 3-307(1)(b). The official comments to § 3-307 explain the operation of that presumption: 63 It means that until some evidence is introduced which would support a finding that the signature is forged or unauthorized the (party claiming under the signature) is not required to prove that it is authentic. 64 § 3-307, Comment 1. 65 Thus the burden of putting in issue the authenticity of Quisenberry's indorsements lay squarely with Perini. Given the presence of the forged drawer's signatures, the absolute failure of Habersham to verify Quisenberry's identity, and the many other unusual circumstances developed in the record, however, the court below should have assumed for summary judgment purposes that Jesse D. Quisenberry and the two payee contracting companies were nothing other than the products of dark imagination. Whether anything in the record obliged the court also to assume that Perini would prove that the wrongdoers had used the names of a real person and real businesses is less clear. Little in the record suggests that there ever existed a Jesse Quisenberry, a Quisenberry Contracting Co., or a Southern Contracting Co. Much suggests all were fictitious. 66 Whether the names were fictitious or not, however, any lack of authenticity does not alter the result reached by the district court. In either case the Code clearly indicates that lack of authenticity would not render the indorsements ineffective. 67 The authenticity question is answered by § 3-405(1), which provides as follows: 68 An indorsement by any person in the name of a named payee is effective if . . . (b) a person signing as or on behalf of a maker or drawer intends the payee to have no interest in the instrument . . . 69 (emphasis added). Assuming the indorsements were inauthentic, it is clear that whoever drew them intended the named payees, fictitious or real, to have no interest in the checks. 13 Either situation falls squarely within § 3-405(1)(b). 14 Accordingly, § 3-405 eliminates any suggestion that the indorsements in the case at bar were ineffective because they were not genuine. Any ineffectiveness in these indorsements stems from the fact that Quisenberry failed to indorse in a representative capacity. 70