Court Opinion

ID: 9420600
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:55:21.252825+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:26.117234
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Frankfurter,
whom Mr. Justice Jackson joins, dissenting.
I do not understand that the Court affirms the judgment of escheat on the ground that New Jersey may condition the granting of a corporate charter on payment *444to the State of dividends unclaimed after 14 years. Indeed, the Court specifically bars the possibility of double escheat, which would logically result from such a holding. As I understand it, the decision must rest upon New Jersey’s power over interests which in a territorial sense are assumed to be within its control. The foundation of this power is usually conveyed by the concept of situs. As to this ground of decision I must dissent. In Connecticut Life Ins. Co. v. Moore, 333 U. S. 541, this Court sustained a New York statute allowing escheat of the unclaimed proceeds of insurance policies on the basis of the insured’s residence in the State at the time of the delivery of the policy. On that basis, the State where the last known owner was domiciled certainly has a better claim to abandoned stock than a State in which it happens that the corporation is subject to process.
If perchance one is to infer from the opinion that the unclaimed dividends deposited with the Guaranty Trust Company of New York are also escheatable by New York and that New York, had she anticipated New Jersey, could have exhausted all the potentialities of escheat in the unclaimed dividends, there is an added reason for dissent. The Constitution ought not to be placed in an unseemly light by suggesting that the constitutional rights of the several States depend on, and are terminated by, a race of diligence. The Bankruptcy Act expresses appropriate condemnation of such unseemly conduct and accidental solution of competing interests. It is one thing for a State to take custody of abandoned property as trustee, leaving open for subsequent determination what State has a controlling interest justifying escheat. But if a State wishes to assert its right to escheat property, which by its very nature is not exclusively within its control, other interested States should be parties to the litigation. The right to resort to this Court for adjust*445ment of conflicting interests among several States has been placed in the Constitution to avoid crude remedies of self-help in the settlement of interstate controversies. See Texas v. Florida, 306 U. S. 398.