Court Opinion

ID: 7107779
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-24 12:22:53.677738+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:13:37.999737
License: Public Domain

Supplemental Opinion on Re-hearing.
Former decision affirmed.
Given, J.
— A re-hearing was granted in this case that we might, with the aid of further arguments, reconsider the objections urged by appellant to the eighth paragraph of the charge to the jury, or in other words, that we might review the conclusion announced in the third paragraph of the opinion. We have not at any time doubted the correctness of the opinion in other respects, and therefore limit our present inquiry to this one subject. In said instruction the jury was told, in effect, that it was not necessary that they find that the defendant had in person received-the deposit, nor that he was personally present when it was received; that it was enough if it was received by the cashier or agent of the defendant under his authority; that though the defendant instructed his cashier to close the bank, and refused to receive further deposits; and that thereafter the cashier did *200accept and receive this deposit. “Still, if the defendant, with knowledge thereof, accepted and retained as a deposit the amount so received from said Mohling, by said Theodore Eifert, and placed among and treated it as a part of the funds or assets of the bank, having full knowledge from what source and under what circumstances and by whom it was received, he will be deemed to have knowingly accepted such sum as a deposit.”
7 8 Appellant’s first complaint in his argument on re-hearing is that there is no evidence to warrant that part of the instruction to the effect that it was not necessary that the defendant should have received the deposit in person, or have been personally present, nor that it was enough if it was received under his authority. It is true there was no evidence to which this part of the'instruction, taken alone, could apply; but it was a correct statement of the law, and aided'to make plain that which followed in the instruction. Appellant insists that in what follows in said instruction the court attempts to apply to this criminal charge the principle of ratification. He contends that a .criminal act cannot be ratified, and cites in support 1 Am. & Eng. Enc. Law, 480, and the cases therein referred to. The instruction does not submit the question of defendant’s accepting and receiving the deposit by a ratification of what the cashier had done. It rests the question of accepting and receiving upon whether the defendant retained the deposit, and placed and treated it as part of the assets of the bank, with full knowledge of the circumstances under which it had been received by the cashier. The doctrine of ratification is not invoked to charge the defendant with having accepted and received the deposit as of the time it came into the hands of the cashier. The case was submitted upon the inquiry as *201to whether the defendant accepted and received the deposit after being informed of the circumstances under which it had come into the hands of the cashier. In the instruction under consideration, the jury was told that if the defendant, with knowledge of the circumstances under which the deposit was received, accepted and retained it as a deposit, and placed it among and treated it as a part of the assets of the bank, “he will be deemed to have knowingly accepted such sum as a deposit.” In the former opinion we said: “It seems to us that when defendant, after full knowledge of all the facts, on the evening after his return, failed to repudiate the act of his son, and took no steps looking to the return of the deposit to Mr. Mohling, he then knowingly received and accepted the deposit.”
9 10 Appellant contends that, if the defendant and his bank were insolvent at the time the money was received, Mr. Mohling could pursue it as a trust fund in the hands of either the defendant or his assignee, and recover it in kind, or its equivalent, if it had been so mixed with other money as to destroy its identity. He cites Wasson v. Hawkins, 59 Fed Rep. 233, and American Trust & Savings Bank v. Gueder & Paesehke Manufacturing Co. (Ind. Sup.) 37 N. E. Rep. 227. Whether such is the law we need not determine, for, if it be, it would apply with equal force if the deposit had been received by the defendant in person, or by his authority. If it be conceded that Mr. Mohling had the right to pursue that deposit as a trust fund, it does not follow that defendant did not knowingly receive and accept it. He not only failed to repudiate the act of his son in receiving the deposit, and failed to return it, but, within four days after its receipt, included that money in a general assignment made by him for the benefit of his creditors. We have *202re-examined the case with care, and reach'the conclusion that the former'opinion is correct, and it is therefore adhered to. — Aeeibmed.