Court Opinion

ID: 9640880
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 17:17:31.340927+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:05:11.124018
License: Public Domain

DIETRICH, Circuit Judge
(dissenting). I am unable to take the view that there should he a reversal upon the assignee’s appeal. He, of course, has no réal interest and can be recognized only as representing the National City Bank. For some reason, not disclosed, that institution has not seen fit to appear, by intervention or otherwise, and thus become bound by any judgment that may ultimately be entered. Admittedly it holds no formal go-down warrants or warehouse receipts. I agree that mere form is not controlling, and that, with informal documents resting upon the fact of actual warehousing, it should be given a footing with the holders of formal receipts. But under commercial usage and the law a formal warehouse receipt, like more eommon negotiable instruments, carries certain presumptions, and its production establishes for the holder a prima facie case. Sueh presumptions I do not think attend the documents here produced on behalf of the National City Bank.. Ordinarily a warehouse receipt imports an obligation of the warehouse company, and thus being against interest, it may he presumed to have been issued only for goods actually received. Here there was no such safeguard. The certificate or document relied upon as a warehouse receipt was issued by the warehouse company, in the furtherance of its own inter*820ests. It wanted the bank’s money and could get it only by executing such a paper.
In the ordinary ease of warehousing, the warehouse company would have no incentive to falsify the facts by issuing a receipt for goods it did not actually receive; here by issuing a false receipt it would be able to get the bank’s money. Though without a formal receipt the bank here offered no evidence that the actual facts were such as to justify the issuance of such a document. Not only did the assignee, who, having possession of the records of the warehouse company, presumably was in a better position than any other party to the suit to make proof, fail to offer any evidence, but he resisted the efforts of appellee, affirmatively to show that the company had never received the flour. No explanation is offered of the eireumstancés surrounding the transaction with the bank, and no evidence even of its date. . "While in the briefs it is argued that the bank should be protected as a holder in good faith, it did not see fit to disclose to the court the facts from whieh it would appear to be such a holder. In the opinion of the majority it is .said: “As long as the warehouse company, held the note of the trading corporation, it will be conceded that it could assert no right as pledgee in any of the flour in storage as against the holders of warehouse receipts where there was not sufficient flour in storage to meet the demands of all. 27 R. C. L. 979. But when the warehouse company attorned or transferred its right in the pledged property to the appellant, a different situation arose.” But there is no evidence other than the self-serving certificate that the warehouse company had on hand any of the supposed flour when it dealt with the bank.. And if, as stated in the majority opinion, it could assert no right against other holders of warehouse receipts, if at the time it dealt with the bank “there was not sufficient flour in storage to meet the demands of all,” how could it transfer to the bank a right it did not possess? We know only that on August 1, 1927, there were in the warehouse 91,666 bags of flour, against whieh there were outstanding regular receipts for 996,500 bags. Are we to presume that a short time prior to that date, when the warehouse company gave to the bank the certificate or acknowledgment (the precise date of whieh is not shown) it had in its possession more than 1,000,000 additional bags?
I think the decree should be affirmed, with the exception only that as suggested in the last paragraph of the majority opinion, the court below should be-directed to make a finding on the undetermined question there referred to.'