Court Opinion

ID: 9675298
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:48:35.867452+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:33.158254
License: Public Domain

McCALEB, Justice
(concurring).
Since my views in this case are somewhat different from those expressed in the majority opinion, I feel impelled to set them down in writing.
Generally speaking, I believe that there should be a strict adherence to the uniform jurisprudence of this Court that an attorney is without right to recover fees from parties who have not employed him, even though they have been directly benefited by his services (see Dreifus v. Colonial Bank & Trust Co., 127 La. 1086, 54 So. 358 and the many authorities cited in our original opinion) for, as well stated in McWilliams v. Hagan, 4 Rob. 374, “In the absence of any privity, a very strong case indeed must be made out, to justify the application of the maxim that no man should be permitted to enrich himself at the expense of another, as a ground of recovery.” Yet this rule cannot be regarded inflexible as there may undoubtedly be instances, in which an attorney hah performed valuable services for another without express or implied authority from which a quasi contract would result pursuant to Article 2295 of the Civil Code or he may be recognized as a negotiorum gestor and be entitled as such to reimbursement for his labors under Article 2299.
I do not subscribe to the majority view that the attorneys here seeking compensation from the depositors from whom they had no mandate, are entitled to recover on the theory that the oppositions they filed for their own clients were class actions and by their efforts, they created or preserved a “fund”. The record is clear that these lawyers never formally asserted that they were representing a class; the pleadings showing that the oppositions were expressly restricted to the claims of the depositors hiring them.
Nor does it seem to me that a fund was either created or preserved by the oppositions. The claims were for the enforcement of the legal obligation of the liquidator- to pay interest on the total amounts of the opponents’ deposits from the inception of the judicial liquidation, an obligation which had already been recognized by this Court in Liquidation of Canal Bank & Trust Company, 211 La. 803, *84730 So.2d 841 and Bank of Baton Rouge v. Hart Estate, Inc., 216 La. 603, 44 So.2d 311.
The case, in my opinion, is not parallel to the so-called “fund doctrine” pronouncements of the common law and federal courts, which are treated extensively in the annotation 49 A.L.R. 1150, quoted from in the majority opinion.1
On the other hand, I am convinced that the attorneys before us are entitled to recover on another basis — that is, because they have been successful in securing interest for the depositors, who failed to oppose the liquidator’s account, recognition of their right to interest on their deposits to which they would not have been entitled under the jurisprudence in effect at the time.
In the Canal Bank & Trust Company case, which was decided in 1947, this court held that, whereas depositors of the bank in judicial liquidation, having been closed by order of the President of the United States in the monetary emergency arising out of the depression, were entitled to legal interest on their deposits, judicial enforcement of this right was available only to those depositors opposing the accounts filed by the bank liquidator and,’ further, that the depositors’ acceptance of partial distributions paid by the liquidator operated as a waiver of the right to claim interest on the amounts received.
Notwithstanding this pronouncement, the district judge, after a trial of the oppositions of the creditors represented by the present applicants, ordered the Bank Commissioner to pay all creditors and depositors interest at the rate of 5'% per annum from the inception of the liquidation on the full amount of the deposits. The liquidator appealed from this judgment and counsel (apparently appearing for all depositors whether opponents or not) questioned the correctness of our ruling in the Canal Bank case that depositors, failing to oppose provisional distribution of the liquidation, were bound by the judgments of homologation and could not claim interest on the amounts, distributed. And, although our opinion with respect to these complaints and those of the liquidator appellant (see In re Interstate Trust & Banking Co., 222 La. 979, 64 So.2d 240) was *849said to be controlled by the Canal Bank decision, the decree, which reversed the lower court only insofar as it ordered the Bank Commissioner to pay interest on funds disbursed in accordance with provisional accounts homologated without opposition and affirmed it in other respects, had the effect of limiting the Canal Bank decision in that it approved the order of the trial judge awarding interest on the undistributed 17i/£% of the total frozen deposits, even though those persons (excepting the opponents therein) were not claiming interest thereon and had not opposed the account.
Thus, it is seen that, in obtaining this judgment, appellants herein performed a service to all depositors who were not before the Court, which was not incidental to the claims of the opponents employing them and over and above the services rendered to their clients.
Under these exceptional circumstances, I think that appellants are entitled to recover by virtue of Articles 2295 and 2299 of the Civil Code and therefore respectfully concur in the decree.

. Nor do I perceive that McGraw v. Andrus, 45 La.Ann. 1073, 13 So. 630, controls here. The court, in that case, did not give recognition to the so-called fund doctrine in this State. There, some of the creditors of an insolvent, who were successful in having certain property which he had fraudulently transferred, declared, a nullity and returned to his es-1 tate, were claiming that they alone were entitled to the benefit of the recovered property and that it should be applied to their debt. The court rejected this contention but stated that, since the unmasking of fraudulent concealment of the debt- or’s property had been accomplished by the plaintiff creditors, all costs, including attorneys’ fees, should be paid out of the insolvent’s estate.