Court Opinion

ID: 9460250
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:45:43.491607+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:32.663685
License: Public Domain

HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judge
(dissenting) :
I cannot agree that this case falls within the ambit of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(b). Once the bonds were delivered to Mr. Malouf, the bank had no legitimate interest in what he did with his property. The relationship of the bank to the bonds after it returned them to Mr. Malouf was no different from its relationship to cash delivered to a customer at a teller’s window and placed by the customer in his wallet. In neither instance is the property “in the care, custody,, control, management, or possession” of the bank within the meaning of section 2113(b). (See Lubin v. United States (9th Cir. 1963) 313 F.2d 419.)
Of course, the bank owed a duty of care to Mr. Malouf, “just as any business owes to its business invitees,” to protect the customer from unreasonable risk of harm to his person. But the “care” to which section 2113 is addressed is not the common law duty of care to the person, but rather care of property belonging to the bank or entrusted to it, as the words of the statute itself make plain: “Whoever takes and carries away, with intent to steal or purloin, any property or money or any other thing of value exceeding $100 belonging to, or in the care, custody, control, management, or possession of any bank [is subject to prescribed punishment]." (18 U.S.C. § 2113(b). See also Way v. United States (10th Cir. 1959) 268 F.2d 785, 786 (purpose of § 2113(b) is to protect the financial stability of the Federal Reserve Bank System).)
Chapman v. United States (9th Cir. 1965) 346 F.2d 383 is not in point. Chapman stole property of the bank, as well as personal property of an employee, used by the employee in the performance of bank duties, left in a desk drawer in the bank. Chapman argued that property not owned by the bank could not be taken in violation of section *2282113(b). We held only that the fact that some of the items stolen “did not belong and had never ‘belonged’ to the bank, as appellant urges, is immaterial,” since the employee’s property was “ ‘within the care, custody or control of the bank’ and thus within the statute here involved.” (346 F.2d at 387.)
The majority’s unwarranted extension of criminal liability under section 2113(b) disregards a fundamental principle of statutory construction. The Supreme Court has noted that “Congress has traditionally been reluctant to define as a federal crime conduct readily denounced as criminal by the States,” (United States v. Bass (1971) 404 U.S. 336, 349, 92 S.Ct. 515, 523, 30 L.Ed.2d 488) and has recognized that broad construction of federal penal statutes could alter sensitive federal-state relationships and could overextend limited federal police resources. (Rewis v. United States (1971) 401 U.S. 808, 812, 91 S.Ct. 1056, 28 L.Ed.2d 493.) Consequently, the Court has held that an enlargement of federal criminal jurisdiction will not be approved “unless Congress conveys its purpose clearly.” (United States v. Bass, supra 404 U.S. at 349, 92 S.Ct. at 523, see LeMasters v. United States (9th Cir. 1967) 378 F.2d 262, 268.) The majority’s construction of “care” depends, at best on the ambiguity of that word as it is used in section 2113(b).
If the majority’s interpretation of section 2113(b) is correct, moreover, it suggests that banks will now be exposed to a new range of civil liability. If the bank’s duty to protect Mr. Malouf from an unreasonable risk of harm extends to protecting his property from potential theft by his employee, are not banks facing future civil damage suits of major proportions ? In this case, the exposure of Mr. Malouf’s bank would be $315,000.
I would reverse.