Dymock v. Midland National Bank

67 Mo. App. 97
CourtMissouri Court of Appeals
DecidedJune 15, 1896
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 67 Mo. App. 97 (Dymock v. Midland National Bank) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Missouri Court of Appeals primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Dymock v. Midland National Bank, 67 Mo. App. 97 (Mo. Ct. App. 1896).

Opinion

Smith, J.

By reference to 54 Mo. App. 400, a full report of this case when it was here on a former appeal will be found. For the purpose of a general understanding of the present case, we think the statement there will suffice.

Every question arising on the record in the case now before us, except that which we shall hereafter notice, was there fully considered and determined. The only question in the case remaining to be determined is whether the defendant bank was a bona fide holder of the bill of lading with draft attached.

It appears from the uncontradicted testimony of Mr. Winants, vice-president of the defendant bank, that the Currier Commission Company was a customer of the defendant bank, and had been for several years before the date of the transaction out of which the present controversy arose, and that the course of dealing between the said commission company and defendant bank was that the latter kept an account with the former and borrowed money of such latter, both on notes and overdraft; that on the morning of the twenty-seventh of October, 1891, the date of the transaction above referred to, the aggregate amount of the notes and overdraft owing by the commission company to the defendant bank was $14,500; that by an arrangement between the commission company and the defendant bank, the former was to leave with the latter elevator receipts, shipper’s orders, bills of lading, sufficient to protect the loans to the former; that the bills of lading left in the defendant bank, without any draft attached', were to be held by it as collateral security for the amount of loans, while the bills of lading with draft attached were received, and placed to the credit of [101]*101the commission company as a deposit of so much money; that for the amount of a deposit of the bills of lading with draft attached, the receiving teller would give a receipt by entering the same on the pass book of the commission company; that the bills of lading with draft attached would then be entered on the collection register and sent to the point where payable, either directly or through some intermediate bank; that if, during a day’s business, the amount of the checks of the commission company on the defendant bank were in excess of that of the deposit of the former’s bills of lading, with draft attached, and other cash items, that excess would constitute an overdraft, and if there was an overdraft at the close of the preceding day’s business, it would have the effect to necessarily augment that overdraft; that when a bill of lading with draft attached was returned unpaid, the defendant bank would deliver it to the commission company and take its check for the amount thereof, .and in that way charge back the amount of the unpaid draft; that on the morning of October 27 — the day the bill of lading with draft attached was deposited — the account of the commission company was overdrawn $3,600; or, in other words, that was the amount of its overdraft; that the commission company deposited in the course of that day’s business, including the draft in question, the sum of $2,118 and checked out $1,173, so that the overdraft, at the opening of the defendant bank on the morning of the twenty-eighth of October, had been reduced to the amount of the difference between the two last named amounts; that said draft was returned to defendant bank unpaid after the failure of the commission company, but was not taken up by the latter, as had been the usual custom; that while its account with the defendant bank had a credit, it [102]*102had no corresponding debit for the amount of said draft.

It thus is made plainly to appear from this undenied testimony that the commission company had delivered to the defendant bank the bill of lading with the draft attached and had received a credit therefor on the books of the bank, which had the inevitable effect to reduce the overdraft or indebtedness of the former to the latter. The result of the transaction was that the overdraft of the commission company was extinguished pro tanto. There is no evidence presented by the record that in the least tends to prove that the defendant bank received the bill of lading and draft for collection and credit, but the undisputed evidence is that it received the same as a cash deposit, and that it was so entered on the defendant bank’s books of account. By the very act of the deposit, the Currier Commission Company applied the amount thereof to' the reduction or extinguishment of its debit or overdraft.

It has been for quite a while the settled law of this state that the fact that a bank exercises the right to charge the draft back to the account of the depositor, in case it is not paid, or to call upon such depositor to make the amount thereof good by his check, does not in any way change or affect the ordinary legal relation ' of banker and depositor, which relation is that of debtor and creditor. Ayres v. Bank, 79 Mo. 421; Bullene v. Bank, 79 Mo. 426; Bank v. Rose, 60 Mo. App. 585. By giving credit for the draft, the defendant bank became a bona fide holder of the bill of lading to which it was attached. Newark on Bank Dep., sec. 87; Morse on Banking, sec. 573. The extinguishment of the overdraft of the commission company by the deposit of the said bill of lading and draft thereto attached, in the light of the many authorities cited in the brief of [103]*103counsel for the defendant bank, constituted a sufficient consideration for the transfer of the bill of lading, and made the defendant bank a bona fide holder of the draft.

The effect of receiving the bill of lading with check attached and giving the Currier Commission Company credit for the amount of the draft on the books of the defendant bank, as so much money deposited, against which the former could immediately thereafter draw, was to make, as we think, the defendant bank a purchaser for value. Such being the case, the title passed from the commission company and vested in defendant bank, so that the latter became the absolute owner thereof. Kavanaugh v. Bank, 59 Mo. App. 540; Benton v. Bank, 122 Mo. 332.

And since the overdraft of the commission company to the defendant bank was an antecedent debt, the taking of the bill of lading with the draft thereto attached, in satisfaction or extinguishment of such overdraft, rendered the defendant bank a holder of such bill of lading and draft, a holder for value.’ Lawrence v. Owens, 39 Mo. App. 318; Redpath v. Lawrence, 42 Mo. App. 101; Napa Wine Co. v. Rinehart, 42 Mo. App. 171; Strauss v. Hirsch (not yet reported); Dymock v. Bank, 54 Mo. App. 400; Bank v. Frame, 112 Mo. 502; B. & L. Ass’n v. Bank, 126 Mo. 82; Hodges v. Black, 76 Mo. 537; Fitzgerald v. Barker, 96 Mo. 664.

In Dymock v. Bank, supra, we are reported as saying that: “Where a bill of lading is taken as collateral security for, or in payment of, antecedent indebtedness, the holder acquires no such right to the goods as cuts off the vendor’s right of stoppage in transitu.” It is obvious from the context that what we meant to have said was that, where a bill of lading is taken as collateral security, and not in payment of antecedent [104]*104indebtedness, the holder acquires no such right as cuts ■off the vendor’s right of stoppage in transitu.

In Bank v. Railroad, 62 Mo. App.

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67 Mo. App. 97, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/dymock-v-midland-national-bank-moctapp-1896.