Benguiat v. Gotham National Bank

261 A.D. 199, 24 N.Y.S.2d 836, 1941 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7284

This text of 261 A.D. 199 (Benguiat v. Gotham National Bank) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of the State of New York primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Benguiat v. Gotham National Bank, 261 A.D. 199, 24 N.Y.S.2d 836, 1941 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7284 (N.Y. Ct. App. 1941).

Opinions

Martin, P. J.

The plaintiff Benguiat controlled the plaintiff Intercontinental Company which owned certain waterfront property at Edgewater, N. J. The defendant Gotham National Bank became the owner of the property in 1922 as the result of foreclosure of its junior mortgage and also a prior first mortgage. The bank sold the property in 1923 to Hudson River Dock and Warehouse Company, part of the consideration being a purchase-money mortgage for $155,000 which was foreclosed when the purchaser subsequently defaulted.

At the sale on the foreclosure of this purchase-money mortgage in 1924 the plaintiff Benguiat bid in the property for $173,650, and made a down payment thereon. When he failed to complete the purchase the bank moved in the New Jersey court to set aside the sale and for an order directing a resale. At this point the present action was commenced by the plaintiffs Benguiat and Intercontinental Company charging the bank with fraud and demanding an accounting, and on January 14, 1925, plaintiffs obtained an injunction restraining the bank pendente lite from proceeding with the New Jersey foreclosure action and enjoining it from disposing of the Edgewater property.

The injunction was conditioned on the furnishing of a bond for $25,000 which was issued by the appellant, The Massachusetts Bonding and Insurance Company. The trial resulted in a judgment, entered December 14, 1929, dismissing the complaint without prejudice, and on an appeal from that judgment the injunction was continued on condition that an additional undertaking be filed in the sum of $25,000, which additional bond was also issued by the appellant. The judgment was affirmed (231 App. Div. 828) and leave to appeal to the Court of Appeals was denied (233 App. [201]*201Div. 840), whereupon the injunction pendente lite became finally-dissolved.

The present aspect of the litigation involves the liability of the appellant on its two surety bonds. The record discloses that while the injunction pendente lite was outstanding against it, the Gotham National Bank, in May, 1925, transferred substantially all of its assets, including its rights in the Edgewater property, to the respondent Manufacturers Trust Company in exchange for 7,500 shares of the stock of the trust company. The Edgewater property was shown on the examiner’s report, which was the basis for the transfer, as follows:

“ Statutory Bad Debts and Other Overdue Paper * * *
Amount Slow
Hudson River Dock & W. H. Co............ 155,000 137,000
Real estate mortgage due 26 — Foreclosure proceedings account unpaid interest. Sale held and sold for 171M. Purchaser putting up 22M and failed to complete payment. To be sold again if injunction brought by Benguiat is released. After charges, balance held by sheriff may apply.”

No mention was made of the injunction bonds as assets. The attention of the trust company was called to the suit of the plaintiffs and it was agreed that the bank should defend the litigation, that its attorneys should be compensated by the bank, and that it should not otherwise be liable for the outcome of the suit. Thus it appears that the trust company purchased the property with knowledge of the restrictive effect of the injunction which at that time had been outstanding for more than five months, realizing, of course, that disposition thereof must await the outcome of the law suit and that if the plaintiffs were successful the title of the trust company would be doubtful.

The damages sustained by the bank have been paid and the sole questions on this appeal relate to the appellant’s liability for damages assessed in favor of the Manufacturers Trust Company and the rule of damages applied.

The undertakings in this case were given in compliance with the requirements of section 893 of the Civil Practice Act, and the surety company undertook to pay to the party enjoined “ * * * such damages, not exceeding a sum, specified in the undertaking, as he may sustain by reason of the injunction * * The trust company was not the party enjoined and it has no rights whatever under the specific language of section 893. It has been determined, however, that the trust company is pro[202]*202tected under- the provisions of section 895 of the Civil Practice Act. That section reads as follows:

“ § 895. Damages sustained by a third person. Where the defendant enjoined was an officer of a corporation, or joint-stock association, or a bailee, agent, trustee or other representative of another, and the damages sustained by him are less than the sum specified in the undertaking, the court or the referee may also separately ascertain and determine the damages sustained by reason of the injunction, by the corporation, association, or person, whom the defendant represents, to an amount not exceeding the surplus of the sum specified in the undertaking; and those damages may be recovered in a separate action brought as prescribed in the next section.”

When the injunction was originally issued none of the representative relationships enumerated in section 895 existed between the bank and the trust company with respect to the property covered thereby, and at that time the trust company was not in any way affected by the injunction. The interest of the bank and that of the trust company were successive, neither interest existing at the same time. ■

In Andrews v. Glenville Woolen Co. (50 N. Y. 282) it was said by Judge Rapallo (at p. 285): “ It seems to me more reasonable to hold that when proceedings, conducted by one party for his own benefit in the name of another, are restrained by an injunction not directed to the party in interest by his name, the damages and expenses incurred by him in procuring the discharge of the injunction should be presumed in law to have been incurred by the defendant on the record, and should be recoverable in his name for the benefit of the real party in interest.”

In.that case it appears that the order of injunction restrained the Glenville Woolen Company, its attorneys, etc., and all persons acting or pretending to act in its name or on its behalf, from taking any steps or proceedings to compel the payment of certain judgments which had been recovered in the name of that company against Ripley & Cameron, from which judgments appeals were pending. These judgments had been recovered in the name of the company by persons who claimed to be attaching creditors of the company (a foreign corporation), and who also claimed the right to conduct the actions through their own attorney and to use the name of the company therein, pursuant to the provisions of sections 232 and 238 of the Code. On its facts it is readily distinguishable from the situation before us where the trust company, a stranger to the litigation at the time the injunction was issued, bought into the law suit thereafter. Furthermore, the Andrews [203]*203case was decided in 1872, prior to the enactment of section 624 of the Code of Civil Procedure which later became section 895 of the Civil Practice Act.

Somewhat analogous provisions of a bond in replevin were considered in First Commercial Bank v. Valentine (155 App. Div. 91; affd., 209 N. Y. 145). There, in an action by Welch Motor Car Company against P.

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Related

Green v. . Clarke
12 N.Y. 343 (New York Court of Appeals, 1855)
First Commercial Bank v. . Valentine
102 N.E. 544 (New York Court of Appeals, 1913)
Andrews v. . the Glenville Woolen Co.
50 N.Y. 282 (New York Court of Appeals, 1872)
Manning, Bowman Co. v. . Keenan
73 N.Y. 45 (New York Court of Appeals, 1878)
First Commercial Bank v. Valentine
155 A.D. 91 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1913)
First Commercial Bank v. Valentine
163 A.D. 709 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1914)
Kelley v. Osborn
172 A.D. 6 (Appellate Division of the Supreme Court of New York, 1916)

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Bluebook (online)
261 A.D. 199, 24 N.Y.S.2d 836, 1941 N.Y. App. Div. LEXIS 7284, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/benguiat-v-gotham-national-bank-nyappdiv-1941.