In Re Interstate Trust & Banking Co.

194 So. 35
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedFebruary 26, 1940
DocketNo. 17313.
StatusPublished
Cited by2 cases

This text of 194 So. 35 (In Re Interstate Trust & Banking Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
In Re Interstate Trust & Banking Co., 194 So. 35 (La. Ct. App. 1940).

Opinion

JANVIER, Judge.

Mississippi Cotton Seed Products Company intervenes in the liquidation proceedings of Interstate Trust & Banking Company and claims $1,347.91 on the ground that, as the result of a combination of events and circumstances, the said bank in liquidation applied on account of the payment of a note the proceeds of a check which the said Products Company had given to the bank as security for the balance which might be shown to be due on the said note, without allowing credit on the note for $1,347.91, which was the amount of a deferred balance standing on the books of the bank — in a trust account of which the Products Company claims to have been the sole owner — and which, it asserts, should have been applied as an offset pro tanto against any balance due by it on its note.

The bank in liquidation admits the deferred credit balance on its books, but maintains that the Prpducts Company was not entitled to have the said balance applied as an offset on its said note since it was not the sole owner of the said balance, and that, even if it was the owner of the said balance, it did not take the necessary timely steps to entitle itself to that offset, and that, even if it was the sole owner and even if it did take the necessary timely steps to effect the offset, it later waived any rights which it might have had to the offset by giving to the said bank in liquidation a certified check to be used in payment of the note under certain conditions, which have been met. The said bank in liquidation, maintaining that the proceeds of the said check were not sufficient to pay the balance and the accrued interest due on the said note, claims the additional interest, (amounting to $169.74) which it asserts is due.

In the court, a qua, there was judgment maintaining the position of the bank in liquidation and the Products Company has appealed.

The reasons given by the district judge were that, when the Products Company delivered to the liquidators of the bank the certified check, it did so with a written agreement under which the liquidators surrendered certain rights and in which agreement it was in effect stated that should the liquidators decide to use the said check on account of the balance due on the note, they might do so after notice of their intention to do so given five days prior to the use of the check. The trial judge held that when, after receiving such notice, the Products Company permitted more than five days to elapse before taking action to prevent the use of the check, whatever rights the Products Company might have had to claim the offset were waived; that in making the said agreement and then permitting the five days to elapse, the Products Company estopped itself to contend that the offset should have been allowed.

The facts on which the controversy is based are extremely complicated. The Products Company and another corporation known as Magnolia Finance Corporation, are affiliated concerns, the second (Finance Corporation) apparently a subsidiary of the former (Products Company). The two corporations, both domiciled outside of the State of Louisiana, had established the custom, prior to the season of 1932-1933, of arranging for the financing of their seasonal cotton operations by borrowing from various banks such sums as might be necessary, such loans being secured by the deposit'with a trustee for all lending banks of securities furnished by the two borrowing corporations.

Following this custom, and in order to finance the operations for the 1932-1933 *37 season, the two corporations and Interstate Trust & Banking Company, as trustee, as of September 1, 1932, entered into a written agreement under which the Products Company and the Finance Corporation deposited with the bank, as trustee, securities in the form of notes, mortgages, warehouse receipts, et cetera, totaling in value more than $500,000, which, in the said agreement,' were declared to be owned by the two borrowing corporations. It was provided in the agreement that the two corporations might borrow, from time to time, from such banks as they might select, such sums as they might find necessary- — -the total loans'not to exceed $1,000,000 — and that, on notification to the trustee of each loan made, the trustee should issue to the lending bank a certificate acknowledging the interest of that bank up to the amount of such loan in the pledged and' trusteed securities. It was also agreed that the trustee bank (Interstate) might itself make loans and issue to itself certificates of beneficial interest in the pledged and trus-teed securities. Among the securities pledged were what are known as “gin mortgage notes”, which,, from time to time, became due, and to the said trustee bank was assigned the duty of collecting these notes as they matured and of applying the proceeds to the fund out of which, from time to time; repayments were to be made to the lending banks on a pro rata basis. For the season 1932-1933 the loans exceeded $400,000, of which more than $100,-000 had been loaned by the trustee bank. (Interstate). On July 24, 1933, there wás due to the Interstate Bank a balance of $30,000, for the payment of which it, a? trustee, held, as security for itself, all of the securities valued at several hundred thousand dollars. That note on that day was renewed, payable in fifteen days, the new note bearing the following stipulation: “All parties hereto hereby authorize and empower said Bank, at any time to appropriate and apply to the payment and extin-guishment hereof and of any of the obligations or liabilities, direct or contingent, of any of the parties hereto whether now existing or hereafter arising and whether then due or not due, any and all moneys, stocks, bonds, or other property of any kind whatever now or hereafter in the hands of said Bank on deposit or otherwise to the credit of or belonging to any party hereto, including any moneys or other property in transit to or from said Bank for any purpose.”

On August 4, 1933, this note, by a payment of $22,000, was reduced by the Products Company to $8,000. It may be considered significant that the balance which was allowed to remain was $8,000 because this almost exactly represents the sum of the amounts for which the Products Company at that time apparently was contending it should have been credited by the process of offset.

Prior to that time the Interstate Bank, as is well remembered, had, by proclamation of the President of the United States, been placed on a restricted basis, and in its checking account, but not available to the Products Company, there stood on the books of the bank to the credit of the Products Company, $6,677.07. In the account of the trustee, to the credit of the fund created as the result of the agreement of September 1, 1932, there was a credit of $1,347.91. The sum of these two amounts, $8,024.98, it will be noted, if applied as an offset, would have been sufficient to liquidate the balance due by the Products Company on its note for $8,000.

We do not find in the record evidence that at that time the Products Company had demanded that the offset be effected, and all that we may say is that it seems rather obvious, since it cannot be denied that the Products Company was amply able to pay the note, that it hoped that ultimately it would be given credit for the sum of these two balances, and its failure to pay the balance and, in fact, the 'reduction of the balance to $8,000, indicates plainly that all parties understood that the question of offset was before them.

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Bluebook (online)
194 So. 35, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/in-re-interstate-trust-banking-co-lactapp-1940.