Court Opinion

ID: 9558090
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:02:44.290532+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:08:18.900928
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring in part and dissenting in part:
The case presents but two questions: (a) Does a depositor have a tort claim against his banker for wrongful refusal to honor an order for withdrawal of funds on deposit? And if so, then (b) What elements of damage are recoverable?
The depositor’s appeal is from a judgment that confined his recovery to lost interest and denied his plea for other damages alleged to have been occasioned by the harmful event. While I concur in the court’s view that an ex delicto action does lie, I cannot accede to its exposition of the depositor’s recovery limits.
The surviving joint tenant in a savings account [depositor] sought to recover damages from the bank’s wrongful refusal to honor his withdrawal order. The petition unmistakably declares upon a single cause of action in tort. It alleges that because the deposit in suit had been cleared for release by the state tax authority, its withholding by the bank constituted a “wilful, wrongful, malicious and grossly negligent” act.
I
A depositor’s remedy against the bank for wrongful refusal to honor his order of payment is not just a breach of a contract, express or implied, that the bank will pay to the depositor, or his order, any amount that does not exceed the balance on deposit.1 As institutions of “quasi public character” banks are engaged in a calling that places them under a common-law duty to exercise care in obeying their customers’ mandates.2 The banker/depositor relationship embodies two distinct clusters of obligations. Its consensual origin gives rise to a contract, express or implied, which in turn creates a creditor/debtor bond.3 The law itself additionally affixes to it yet another attribute— that of status. In the Anglo-American legal tradition a banker’s wrongful refusal to honor a customer’s order for withdrawal of deposited funds is both a breach of contract and a tortious breach of a status-based duty of care. The depositor may elect between an action ex contractu and one ex delicto.4 If the former be chosen, recovery is limited to the amount of the dishonored order wrongly disobeyed, with interest from the *958date of demand and refusal.5 Should the latter remedy be pursued, the composition of compensable reparation may be entirely different.6
The adoption of the Uniform Commercial Code [Code or UCC] in 19617 had no effect on the range of remedies available under the common-law norms of liability to the depositor wronged by the bank’s dishonor. Nor did the Code abridge his freedom to choose among the various delictual theories of liability — negligence, slander (of credit), conversion or other wilful and malicious harm. With respect to the depositor’s remedies and to his theories of recovery, the pre-Code body of Oklahoma precedent remains unaffected and continues in force.8
The depositor’s petition clearly and unmistakably rests his claim on a “wilful, malicious or grossly negligent” tort. The allegations are sufficient to state an ex delicto cause of action against the bank. There was hence error in striking from the petition all of the tort-related items of recovery.
II
Pre-Code Oklahoma case law distinguishes between two types of actions for delictual dishonor. One of these is for the bank’s refusal to pay on depositor’s demand when the order is in the hands of a third-party payee or holder; the other action is for dishonor of the depositor’s direct withdrawal order. In the former class the law recognizes that impeachment of the customer’s credit may follow as a natural consequence of wrongful dishonor; it hence allows recovery — in a manner akin to that in slander — for mental pain and suffering, embarrassment, humiliation, mortification, worry or other injury to the feelings from harm to one’s reputation which was inflicted wilfully or with malice.9 In contrast to tort actions with an element of slander, the past course taken by this court with respect to the legal loss for a depositor’s injury from the actionable dishonor of his own withdrawal order confines his damages to those elements which are statutorily authorized in litigation for conversion.10 If the criteria of 28 O.S.1971 § 9 are met, a depositor may in the latter type action additionally recover punitive damages.11
I would leave undisturbed all those of the depositor’s alleged items of damages which are applicable, under the terms of 23 O.S. 1971 § 64, to conversion actions, as well as those for punitive damages, but would strike from his petition all references to “mental pain and suffering”. This is so because his claim against the bank for actionable dishonor of his own withdrawal order cannot be rested on a theory akin to slander.

. Commercial Bank v. Latham, 29 Okl. 88, 116 P. 197, 198 (1911); Valley Nat. Bank v. Witter, 58 Ariz. 491, 121 P.2d 414, 418 (1942).

. Commercial Nat. Bank v. Latham, supra note 1; Patterson v. Marine Bank, 130 Pa. 419, 18 A. 632, 633 (1889); Marzetti v. Williams, 1 Barn. & Adol. 415, 109 Eng.Rep. 842 (1830); Rolin v. Steward, 14 C.B. 595, 139 Eng.Rep. 245 (1854).

. Brown v. Eastman National Bank of Newkirk, Okl. 291 P2d 828, 830 (1955), 55 ALR2d 971.

. The status approach to the banker’s tort liability may have its antecedents in the early English law which regarded merchants and money-lenders as occupying “a special status” in the legal order of the day. Graveson, Status in the Common Law 31 (University of London The Athelone Press 1953); Holden, the History of Negotiable Instruments in the English Law 205, 227 (University of London The Athelone Press 1955).

. First Nat. Bank v. Stockton, 117 Okl. 120, 245 P. 638, 640 (1926); Valley Nat. Bank v. Witter, supra note 1.

. Commercial Bank v. Latham, supra note 1.

. 12A O.S.1971 §§ 1-101 et seq.

. The comment following 12A O.S.1971 § 4-402, which deals with the measure of damages for wrongful dishonor by a “payor bank”, expressly notes that the Code “does not attempt to specify a theory” of liability.

. Commercial Nat. Bank v. Latham, supra note 1; Valley Nat. Bank v. Witter, supra note 1; see cases collected in the Annotation of liability of bank to depositor for dishonoring check in 126 ALR 206, 218-219.

. 23 O.S.1971 § 64; First Nat. Bank v. Stockton, supra note 5; see also, McKinnon v. Monarch Loan Co., 111 Okl. 213, 239 P. 170, 172 (1925); Watson v. Stockton Morris Plan Co., 34 Cal.App.2d 393, 93 P.2d 855, 862 (Cal.App. 1939) and 86 P.2d 927, 935 (Cal.App. 1939).

. Fuller v. Neundorf, Okl., 293 P.2d 317, 320 (1956).