Court Opinion

ID: 9675296
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:48:35.859333+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:33.154465
License: Public Domain

FOURNET, Chief Justice
(dissenting).
It is my opinion that the .attorneys who seek redress here are entitled to receive a reasonable compensation for the services they have rendered in making available to all depositors and creditors of the old Interstate Trust & Banking Company the sum of $728,281.01, as legal interest on those frozen balances in the bank at the time it- was closed and placed in liquidation that remained to be distributed under the final account of the liquidator, and which constituted approximately seventeen and a half per cent of the original frozen deposits.
In the lower court the Bank Commissioner alone opposed the rights of these attorneys to the fees claimed. It is apt to observe that this is the same official who, throughout the former trial, vigorously opposed the right of these same creditors and depositors to be paid this interest. It seems to me it comes as bad grace for him to now object to the right of the attorneys to receive compensation out of the funds their services made available when the creditors and depositors themselves neither appeared in the lower court to contest the claim for fees nor appeared in this court to oppose it. Furthermore, it is inescapable from a mere reading of the opinion when the case was formerly before us (222 La. 979, 64 So. 2d 240) that we actually there considered these attorneys represented not only the depositors and creditors that caused their appearance in court to oppose the final *835account when it failed to provide for this interest, but also represented all of the other depositors and creditors in this same class or group, since they are only entitled to the interest if they claim it in opposition to the account.
The authorities relied on by the majority are clearly inapposite from a factual and a legal standpoint since it does not appear in any of the cited cases, as is true in the instant case, that by their services the attorneys made available funds to parties who would, otherwise, have been foreclosed from making any claim to them, and their right to such funds would, therefore, have been forever lost and forfeited.