O'Keefe v. Equitable Trust Co.

103 F.2d 904, 1939 U.S. App. LEXIS 3696
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Third Circuit
DecidedApril 13, 1939
DocketNos. 6844, 6845
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 103 F.2d 904 (O'Keefe v. Equitable Trust Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
O'Keefe v. Equitable Trust Co., 103 F.2d 904, 1939 U.S. App. LEXIS 3696 (3d Cir. 1939).

Opinion

CLARK, Circuit Judge.

This is one of several cases in this court disclosing the banking practices prevalent in Atlantic City during the golden (calf) era. We are in sympathy with the learned District Court in its effort to unravel equitably the tangled skeins following upon the premature departure of the horse. We cannot, however, give our approval to its sanction of the particular method employed in locking this barn or bank. On Saturday morning, January 28, 1933, the Atlantic City National Bank was the victim of a “run”. The difference between a bank and a stocking being, by definition, one of liquidity, no bank can be or is expected to meet its deposits on instant demand. Their payment becomes then a race between time and confidence. In the principal case, the former seemed to be winning and confidence to require corresponding stimulus. The adrenalin was furnished as a result of some previous but undisclosed “arrange[905]*905ment” with the Atlantic City clearing house. In material form, it consisted of a canvas sack containing fifty thousand dollars in Federal Reserve notes. Twenty thousand dollars of this amount, a transfer of funds from another account of the City of Atlantic City to an account in the troubled bank, is not in litigation. Thirty thousand dollars belonged in equal part to the two plaintiff-appellees and is the subject matter of the present suit.

The testimony is pleasing in its narrow compass and in its absence of controversy. It becomes possible, therefore, to let the purposes of the parties appear from the mouths of their human agents. In quoting, we add only what we deem to be appropriate headings and references to the findings of fact of the learned trial judge.

A. Disposition of the Notes

1. Physical.

“Q. Where was the money placed that was brought into the bank? A. tie was told to give it to the tellers. I don’t know whether he did so, or not. I was in the back room the whole day.” Record, p. 36.

“There is nothing in the testimony with relation to how the advanced money was to be handled, and there was no agreement as to segregation of said moneys, except as stated in Findings (2) and (3).” Record, p. 47, Findings of Fact No. 4.

“Mr. McMullin, the vice-president and solicitor of Bank, and apparently authorized so to do, directed that the money be given to the tellers of Bank.” Record, p. 48, Findings of Fact No. 7.

2. Accounting.

“A. Local banks, due local banks fifty thousand dollars, and an entry of fifty thousand dollars, Guarantee Trust Company.” Record, p. 28.

“The ledger of Bank contained two entries with relation to the transaction: One entry charged the $50,000 in the account under the heading ‘Due Local Banks’ and another entry was a credit to Guarantee of $50,000. These entries were made under date of January 28, 1933. The receiver substituted for these entries a deposit credit to the credit of the City of Atlantic City in the amount of $20,000 and $30,000 as amount due Guarantee.” Record, pp. 48, 49, Findings of Fact No. 11.

B. Use of the Notes

“The Bank could use the whole or any part of the said fund for the purpose of paying its demanding depositors, i. e., to meet its own obligations ‘if it were needed’, and if ‘they ran out of their own cash.’ ” Record, p. 47, Findings of Fact No. 2.

2. Psychological.

“The money was also to be used to impress Bank’s customers with the fact that Bank had money available.” Record, p. 47, Findings of Fact No. 3.

To continue the medical metaphor, the doctor was called in too late, and the patient bank died. The current struggle is over its insolvent estate, the plaintiffappellees desiring a preference therein.

We think the learned trial judge placed the greater emphasis on the more difficult question. He stressed definition rather than denunciation of the transaction— technicalities of title rather than mandates of public policy. In this he may have been following counsel’s lead. We say may have been because the abbreviated character of the record leaves the exact nature of the argument in the court below uncertain. We are relegated to inference from the fact that the brief here devotes only three out of twenty-five pages to the subject of public policy. This reluctance may have been due to a pardonable local pride (shame). The banking practices of Atlantic City, at least if those here portrayed are at all typical, seem to us neither admirable nor deserving of judicial approval.

As a result of this false emphasis, the learned trial judge had to meet some very tenuous and unsatisfactory distinctions. The excerpts above quoted leave no doubt of the factual intention of the litigants. It was agreed that, first, the delivcree bank was to mingle the money of the deliveror bank with its own funds; second, the deliveree bank was to display the money so mingled before the depositors of the delivcree bank for the purpose of inspiring them with confidence; third, the deliveree bank was to use the money for the payment of those depositors whose fears had not been quieted; and fourth, the deliveror bank was to be made whole by the creation of some legal obligation. This factual intention had to be given [906]*906legal implementation. Here the minds of the parties did not so clearly meet.

In disposals less than gifts (excluded by hypothesis) the parties are faced, among other things, with a choice of risks. They must estimate the chance of harm to the res or to the person. That estimation may be difficult. Will the flames be physical or financial, the thieves equipped with burglar’s tools or customer’s men? In the case at bar, judgment seems easy. Vaults are strong: security markets, by hypothesis, are weak. The plaintiff-appellees must have been more confident of the res than of its keeper. A gentleman learned in, the law would have known that of the three Anglo-American legal relationships suggested by our facts, debt, bailment or trust, the latter two alone might effectuate this confidence.

Our legal scholar might always generally, and here particularly, with respect to the possibility of bailment, benefit by an extension of his knowledge into the civil law. We say that with some timidity, because it has been our observation that the legal profession regards any reference to comparative law as an indication of intellectual snobbery. The fact is, however, that the transmission of money, as in the principal case, affords us a typical instance of the civil law loan for consumption (mutuum, J.3.14, G.3.90, D.12.1.2.1 ;1 pret de consommation, Colin and Capitant, Droit Civil Francais, Vol. 2, p. 425; Darlehen, Staudinger, Kommentar zum Biirgerlichen Gesetzbuch Vol. 2, part 2, p. 836).

In the civil law, both ancient and modern, the delivery of fungible goods is ordinarily the hallmark of a transaction which differs radically from those primarily concerned with the delivery of nonfungibiles, i. e., the loan for hire (locatio conductio, D.19.2.1, D.19.2.22.1; louage, Colin and Capitant, above cited, p. 544; Miete, Staudinger, above cited, p. 657), the loan for use (commodatum J.3.14.2, pret a usage, Colin and Capitant, above cited, p. 637; Leihe, Staudinger, above cited, p. 824) and the. deposit (depositum, D.16.3.1..8, D.16.3.1.45; depot, Colin and Capitant, above cited, p. 651; Verwahrung, Staudinger, above cited, p. 1081).

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103 F.2d 904, 1939 U.S. App. LEXIS 3696, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/okeefe-v-equitable-trust-co-ca3-1939.