Court Opinion

ID: 6660520
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-07-20 21:01:35.840388+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:00:09.221296
License: Public Domain

Hamer, J.,
dissenting.
I dissent upon the ground that, when the bank received the deposit, it was with the express understanding that it would furnish the money to pay for the house purchased by the defendant. It did not do so, and in consequence the defendant lost the $100 put up as forfeit money. That the money deposited in the bank was afterwards paid is no justification. The bank should not be excused on account of its failure to keep its contract, even if there was a financial flurry which made money scarce; and, if the depositor sustained a loss as the direct consequence of t-lie bank’s failure to furnish the money when it had agreed to do so, the loss should be made good, and a set-off against the note should be allowed. The method of this particular bank in declining to pay out more than a very small amount of the money deposited was adopted by many other banks at the time, and is not deserving of censure from a moral standpoint, because it was this method, which averted a panic that would have been very destructive, probably, of all sorts of financial and manufacturing interests, and would have swept away the savings of thousands of persons in all parts of the United States, but the method, as it affected the defendant in this case, was without legal excuse and ought not to be justified by the decision of a court.