Opinion ID: 344807
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: Fulton's Credit Investigation

Text: 134 Before returning to hand-to-hand combat in the trial court over Habersham's good faith, Perini has one remaining weapon with which it would drag Fulton also into further fray. Perini's final volley misses easily. 135 The appellant claims that Fulton's credit department was negligent in failing to follow up on the discovery that Jesse Quisenberry d/b/a Quisenberry Contracting Co. could not be located in Atlanta and that no business was located at the address Quisenberry gave Habersham. Perini maintains that the credit department should have known a new loan customer at Habersham would be writing checks and that those checks would pass through Fulton, Habersham's Atlanta correspondent bank. Consequently, Perini would hold Fulton accountable for failing to notify its own transit department to be on the lookout for Quisenberry Contracting Co. checks. 136 While § 3-418 immunizes a holder in due course from liability for negligence in transferring a forged check, common law negligence might still follow if a forged check loss could be tied to a holder's unreasonable conduct outside of the collection process. We have held that Georgia banks are accountable for the proximate results of negligent conduct. See Midland Valley Plaza v. Georgia Railroad Bank & Trust Company, 542 F.2d 945 (5th Cir. 1976). 137 We are inclined to join the district court's conclusion that this is the rare case in which the plaintiff fails to put negligence sufficiently in issue to withstand a summary judgment motion. Fulton fully disclosed its discoveries regarding Quisenberry Contracting Co. to Habersham. The swift processing obligations imposed by the Code upon intermediary collecting banks are hard to reconcile with the investigative duties Perini would impose. In two years of discovery Perini has been unable to produce any evidence that any bank would have acted differently or an expert opinion that a bank should act differently. 34 138 A simpler alternative solution presents itself. The Federal Reserve Bank in Atlanta processed the last of the Quisenberry Contracting Co. checks September 17, 1971. The check had already cleared Fulton. Fulton received the credit inquiry that same day, a Friday, and completed the investigation the following Monday. Thus the suspicious information regarding Quisenberry Contracting Co. was not in any of Fulton's hands until after the checks drawn to that name had passed through the transit department. All the checks that passed through thereafter were Southern Contracting Co. checks, about which Fulton received no inquiry. Accordingly, any relay of information between credit and transit department would not have availed Perini.