State ex rel. Beck v. National Bank

52 P.2d 1199, 142 Kan. 792, 1935 Kan. LEXIS 60
CourtSupreme Court of Kansas
DecidedDecember 7, 1935
DocketNo. 32,477
StatusPublished
Cited by4 cases

This text of 52 P.2d 1199 (State ex rel. Beck v. National Bank) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Kansas primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
State ex rel. Beck v. National Bank, 52 P.2d 1199, 142 Kan. 792, 1935 Kan. LEXIS 60 (kan 1935).

Opinion

The opinion of the court was delivered by

Dawson, J.:

This is an appeal from a judgment overruling a demurrer to an amended petition in which the state seeks to recover from the defendant bank the sum of $150,000, which it is alleged the bank misappropriated and misapplied to its own use out of state funds deposited in the bank.

This civil action is one consequence of a series of crimes pertaining to misuse of state funds, various chapters of which are chronicled in our reports, and which culminated in the incarceration in the penitentiary of two of the participants and the suicide after conviction of another. (State v. Finney, 139 Kan. 578, 32 P. 2d 517; State v. Boyd, 140 Kan. 623, 38 P. 2d 655; State v. Finney, 141 Kan. 12, 40 P. 2d 411.)

Before scrutinizing the state’s amended petition it may serve to shorten that task, and aid us in determining the propriety of defendant’s demurrer thereto, to summarize the least controversial facts and circumstances on which the state chiefly relies to fasten this large liability on the defendant bank.

On and prior to June 30,1933, one T. B. Boyd was state treasurer. [793]*793On that date and for a long time prior thereto the National Bank of Topeka, defendant, was one of the selected state depositories in which the state kept its funds subject to check as its fiscal needs might require. The defendant bank, on June 30, 1933, held state funds on deposit to the amount of $1,282,177.57. Under its bond for the security of such deposits, it might lawfully have held state funds to the amount of $700,000. The Eureka Bank of Eureka, Greenwood county, was also a state depository, under a bond which would authorize it to hold state deposits in the sum of $90,000. Another bank which figures incidentally in the material matters of present concern was the Fidelity State and Savings Bank of Emporia.

In June, 1933, and for some time prior thereto, one Ronald Finney was a borrowing customer of the defendant National Bank of Topeka. He had obtained a loan from that bank in the sum of $150,000. As security therefor he had pledged bonds of various municipalities of the face value of $151,600, some of which, perhaps all of which, were either sheer forgeries or were the property of the school fund of the state of Kansas.

One W. W. Finney, father of Ronald Finney, was the president of the Fidelity State and Savings Bank of Emporia. Both these Finneys were influential with T. B. Boyd, state treasurer.

About June 30, 1933, the defendant bank became aware of the questionable character of the securities pledged to secure the Ronald Finney loan, and it demanded that the Finneys pay off that loan and withdraw those securities. This demand was summarily complied with as follows: Boyd, state treasurer, drew a check on the National Bank of Topeka for $150,000 in favor of the Eureka Bank and delivered it to W. W. Finney. He stamped it with the indorsement of the Eureka Bank, and also with the indorsement of the Fidelity State & Savings Bank of Emporia, and delivered it to the defendant bank as a deposit to the credit of the Emporia bank; whereupon the defendant bank charged against the state’s deposit account the amount of the state treasurer’s check, $150,000, and credited that sum to the Emporia bank, and charged against it the amount of Ronald Finney’s note, and surrendered to W. W. Finney the questioned securities.

This devious transaction was initiated and consummated on June 30, 1933, without the state treasurer’s check passing through either of the banks of Eureka or Emporia, and without there being any [794]*794bona fide transaction to warrant the drawing of a check against the state’s deposit in the defendant bank in favor of the Eureka bank. The net result of this alleged legerdemain was the loss of $150,000 to the state of Kansas. And whether the defendant bank was a culpable coadjutor in this criminal transaction or merely the innocent instrumentality through which it was accomplished is the gist of this lawsuit.

Plaintiff’s original petition, a document of six printed pages, was subjected to a motion to make more definite and certain. The motion was sustained in part, whereupon an amended petition, extending to twelve printed pages, was filed. (See addendum.) Various motions leveled at it were overruled, and defendant then demurred on two grounds:

“1. That the petition does not state facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action.
“2. That several causes of action are improperly joined.”

This demurrer was overruled, hence this appeal.

Touching first on defendant’s second ground of demurrer, that several inconsistent causes of action were improperly joined, the state asserts that but a single cause of action is pleaded, and only a single cause of action is intended to be pleaded; and that the elaborate recitals of its petition are merely the number and variety of facts which comprise it.

While the amended petition sets out at length certain matters which would suggest questions of law touching the regularity of the bank’s status as a state depository and the limitations of that status, no liability is sought to be fastened on the defendant on that account. If the bank was insolvent and the safety of the state’s deposit was a serious question, the distinct and peculiar liability of the bank as a trustee ex maleficio, if such it be, would assume an importance which does not exist in this lawsuit. Neither is liability sought to be fastened on the defendant because the Eureka bank had not qualified and could not qualify as a state depository for $150,000 if the state treasurer’s check had been drawn in its favor for such a purpose; nor is it intended to fasten liability on the defendant on the ground that no legitimate transaction did or could arise which would justify a transfer of the vast sum of $150,000 of state funds from the Topeka bank to the Eureka bank. Either the defendant knowingly participated in the alleged scheme to rid itself of the Ronald Finney loan and the questionable securities pertaining to [795]*795it, through what was no more than a mere simulation of a treasury and banking transaction which had no legitimate basis, or it is not liable for the alleged loss of funds the state may have sustained. It is on this relatively simple issue of fact and the legal consequence which will attach thereto that the state’s cause of action is based; and this court holds that the second objection raised by the defendant’s demurrer to the state’s amended petition was not well taken, and the trial court’s ruling thereon was correct.

With the foregoing question out of the way, defendant’s contention that the amended petition did not state a cause of action should not be difficult of solution. Bearing in mind that for the purpose of testing the sufficiency of the amended petition every material fact alleged and every reasonable inference justified thereby are to be construed favorably to the pleader, just what can be said to be wanting to a sufficient statement of the state’s cause of action? The state alleges that through the alleged maneuvers of defendant and the state treasurer and W. W. Finney it has lost $150,000. It alleges that the various alleged steps by which that loss was caused were knowingly participated in by the defendant.

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Related

Ballard v. Claude Drilling Co.
88 P.2d 1021 (Supreme Court of Kansas, 1939)
Jackson v. National Bank
71 P.2d 1057 (Supreme Court of Kansas, 1937)
Hasty v. Bays
66 P.2d 265 (Supreme Court of Kansas, 1937)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
52 P.2d 1199, 142 Kan. 792, 1935 Kan. LEXIS 60, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/state-ex-rel-beck-v-national-bank-kan-1935.