Court Opinion

ID: 9829412
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:17:39.252972+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:00.900866
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
In deference to the earnestness with which the eminent senior counsel for ap-pellee insists we have erred in our decision, and because of the very high regard all members of this court entertain for his great legal ability and uniform sincerity in the advocacy of any position taken, particularly when so vigorously asserted as in the motion for rehearing, we feel impelled to make some further brief observations in disposing of the motion.
Our conclusion that the assumption by appellee of the liabilities of the insolvent bank had the effect in law of making the deposit of $5017.54 of appellant in the old bank a general deposit of like amount in the new bank is most vigorously challenged. One or more definitions of “depositor” and “deposit” are quoted to enforce the argument that appellant could not, perforce of the contract between the banking commissioner and the new bank, have become a general depositor in said new bank. Corpus Juris is quoted thus : “A general deposit which is the ordinary form is the payment of money into the bank to be repaid on demand, in whole or in part, as called for in any current money.” 7 C.J. p. 628, § 305. Also, this quotation from 7 Am.Jur. p. 292, § 418: “A genéral deposit consists in. a delivery of money or funds into the possession of the bank, whose property the deposit becomes, in return for which the depositor receives a credit of the amount represented by the deposit, against which credit the depositor may draw in the usual course of the bank’s business.” It is insisted that in every case cited in the opinion “that a depositor passed money into the bank or passed a check which was cashed.” It seems to us that, if the question is to be determined by the literal terms of the definition, then we would have to say that no depositor of any amount in the old bank became a depositor of any amount in the new bank. No money or funds changed hands.No depositor of the old bank personally, or by any one for him, passed any amount of money or funds into the new bank. But, could it be said that to the extent of the deposits assumed the old depositors were not depositors in the new bank? We think not. When appellant made the deposit in the old bank, what was the nature of the contract between the depositor and the bank ? It was undoubtedly a general deposit. The relation of banker and depositor arose. The contract obligation of the bank was to pay upon demand. The contract of assumption bound the purchasing bank not only to pay “without deduction or discount,” but “in accordance with the terms and provisions of the original contracts, agreements and undertakings between said The Farmers State Bank and its depositors,” etc. Could there be any more express and specific assumption not only of the obligation to pay the amount, but to pay in accordance with the contract by which the deposit was made in the old bank f
Suppose a depositor in the old bank of, say, $2,000, by a mistake of bookkeeping, was credited with only $1,000, and when the new bank was organized the latter credited such former depositor with 80 per cent, of $1,000. Can it be said that such depositor in the old bank became a depositor of only $800 in the new bank, payable on demand,- but the remaining $1,200 was not payable under the same terms? If a mere matter of bookkeeping on the part of either *742bank, not assented to by the depositor, can be controlling as to the amount of the deposit, then it seems there was little virtue in the i equirement of the banking commissioner that the assumption of deposits be in full. It seems to us the more reasonable view, and in fact the only one that could give effect to the contract made for the benefit of the depositors of the old bank, would be that the original contracts remained in force having the same nature and effect as before, with the single exception that the new bank was substituted for the old bank. Under this view, if a depositor in the old bank was a special depositor, he remained so. If he was a general creditor whose claim became due upon a certain specified date, the obligation remained one due on that date. If he was a general depositor and the obligation of the. bank was to pay on demand, the obligation of the new bank was to pay on demand.
Under any other view, as we see it, the obligation to assume and pay in full without discount would not be as the contract required, that'is, “in accordance with the terms and provisions of the original contracts, agreements and undertakings between” the old bank and its “depositors.”
It is therefore our conclusion that the motion for rehearing should be overruled, and it is accordingly so ordered.