Court Opinion

ID: 9830433
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 20:12:34.344194+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:22.343586
License: Public Domain

On Motion for Rehearing.
Appellant’s position has heretofore been that the certificate of deposit here in question is negotiable. Now, in her motion for rehearing, she changes her position “upon a more thorough search of the law” and concludes that the certificate of deposit is non-negotiable, due to the fact that it is payable in “current funds,” citing an opinion of the Commission of Appeals on a certified question, which opinion was adopted by the Supreme Court. First State Bank of Annona v. Hidalgo Land Co., Tex.Com.App., 268 S.W. 144, 146.
It is true that the opinion in the cited case held that a certificate of deposit, which was otherwise in form negotiable, was nonnegotiable where it was made payable in “current funds.” The court recognized, that since the adoption of the Uniform Negotiable Instruments Act, the courts of other states generally held such an instrument to be negotiable. But prior to the adoption of such act it had been settled in Texas that an instrument payable in “current funds” was non-negotiable, and the Supreme Court felt that the act did not change the law in this respect. The Legislature was in session at the time, and the Supreme Court called the matter to the Legislature’s attention, and in effect recommended that subdivision 5 of Section 6 be amended so as expressly to provide that the negotiable character of an instrument should not be affected by the fact that “ ‘It is payable in currency or current funds * * *. The words “currency”, “current money” or “current funds” shall mean such circulating media as are legal tender or are lawfully and actually circulating at par with legal tender at the time and place of payment.’” ‘(Emphasis ours.) But for whatever reason, no such amendment has been adopted.
The opinion in the cited case was handed down in January, 1925. Since that time the Congress has abolished the distinction between “money” and “currency” of .“current funds,” by making the circulating notes of banks, empowered to issue such notes, legal tender. “All coins and currencies of the United States (including Federal Reserve notes and circulating notes of Federal Reserve banks and national banking associations) heretofore or hereafter coined or issued, shall be legal tender for all debts * * *” Title 31, Chapter 9, Legal Tender Section 462, U.S.C.A. Since all currency or current funds lawfully in circulation was made legal tender in 1933, the fact that the certificate in question was made payable in “current Funds” in 1944 did not prevent it from being a negotiable instrument. In other words, “current funds” is now legal tender, and there is now no distinction between “money”, “currency” and “current funds”.
We expressly sustained the position of appellant that the certificate could not be held to be non-negotiable on the ground that provision was made therein for payment to an alternative payee. And the appellees here never made any contention that the instrument was non-negotiable, but, to the contrary, their position was based throughout on the assumption that it was negotiable. During oral argument the question was put from the bench if the provision that payment was to be in “current funds” had any effect, and it was answered that such provision was standard in certificates of deposit. We think that it comes too late for a party to change his position, after the judgment of the trial court has been affirmed, and contend for the first time on motion for rehearing that the instrument in question was non-negotiable for any reason.
Appellant’s motion for rehearing is overruled.