Court Opinion

ID: 9422567
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:03:16.776587+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:37.645981
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Black,
with whom Mr. Justice Douglas joins, concurring.
I concur in the Court’s remand of these cases, as I agree that, even if the bank could under 12 U. S. C. § 94 be *595sued only in the county where it is located, the bank.may waive the benefits of the statute. Charlotte Nat. Bank v. Morgan, 132 U. S. 141. But I concur only in the result, since I am in total disagreement with the Court’s interpretation of § 94 and would prefer to affirm the judgments below holding that the Michigan National Bank can be sued in the Nebraska courts. Each lawsuit grew out of a business transaction in which the Michigan bank financed a Nebraska resident’s purchase of a house trailer from a Nebraska dealer. Now, under this Court’s holding, these people in Nebraska who allege that their contracts were usurious under Nebraska law must, unless the bank be held to have waived statutory venue, go all the way to Michigan to try to vindicate their rights against the bank. This harsh result is held to be compelled by a provision of the Act of June 3, 1864, c. 106, § 30, 13 Stat. 108, now codified in 12 U. S. C. § 94. I do not know of a single Act Congress has passed in a century which clearly and explicitly denies a person in one State the privilege of filing suit in his own State against an out-of-state company where service can be obtained and where the suit arises out of a transaction within the State. And I am not willing to find such a congressional purpose in § 94. I realize that this Court did hold several weeks ago in Mercantile Nat. Bank v. Langdeau, 371 U. S. 555, that this statute requires a suit in a state court against a national bank to be brought in the county where the bank is located. Langdeau merely required that the plaintiff sue in one county of the State rather than in another. Formal logic strictly applied might call for expansion of that holding to cover the different factual situation here. But that would require a plaintiff to go to another State hundreds of miles from home to bring suit for a wrong done him in a transaction in his own State, a result which I cannot believe Congress intended.