Youmans v. State

66 S.E. 383, 7 Ga. App. 101, 1909 Ga. App. LEXIS 553
CourtCourt of Appeals of Georgia
DecidedNovember 9, 1909
Docket1882
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 66 S.E. 383 (Youmans v. State) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals of Georgia primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Youmans v. State, 66 S.E. 383, 7 Ga. App. 101, 1909 Ga. App. LEXIS 553 (Ga. Ct. App. 1909).

Opinion

Bussell, J.

The plaintiff in error was charged by special presentment with the “offense of a felony, for that the said George B. Youmans, on the twenty-third day of November, in the year of our Lord, one thousand nine hundred and seven, in the county aforesaid, with force and arms and unlawfully, being then and there the president of the Bank of Wayeross, a chartered bank incorporated under the laws of said State, and, as -such officer of said chartered bank, he being by law charged with the fair and legal administration of its .affairs, the said Bank' of Wayeross, then and there pending and during the said official charge and responsibility of the said George B. Youmans, did then and there be and become fraudulently insolvent, contrary to the laws of said State, the good order, peace and dignity thereof.” The defendant demurred to the-indictment as being- insufficient, and his demurrer was overruled. Bailing to have the presentment quashed upon demurrer (which would have effected a final disposition of the case), he excepts to the judgment overruling his demurrer. , There are sixteen grounds of the demurrer, but these grounds are treated in the brief of plain[103]*103tiff in error under six heads, stated as follows. “First: The grounds attacking the construction of the statute as claimed by the State, and showing that said statute relates only to banks of issue. Second: Grounds attacking said statute because the same was repealed, first, by the constitution of 1868, and second, by the constitution of 1877, prohibiting punishment for debt. Third: Grounds attacking the said statute because same is in violation of the constitutional inhibition against imprisonment for debt. Fourth: Grounds attacking the said statute because same was repealed by the act approved December 30, 1893, providing a new code of laws for the circulation of notes by State banks. Fifth: Grounds attacking said statute and the indictment because in violation of the elementary principle that a union of act and intention or criminal negligence is necessary to constitute a crime, and no one of these elements is alleged against the defendant. Six: Grounds attacking the sufficiency of the indictment under any and all circumstances, and regardless of the construction given the statute.” We think all of the objections to the indictment which are presented in the demurrer can be summarized under four heads, and shall so discuss them.

1. The stress of the argument of learned counsel for the plaintiff in error is principally addressed to the point that the provisions of §306 of the Penal Code apply only to banks of issue. It is sought to support the argument to this effect by a consideration of the origin of the statute now embodied in §306 of the Penal Code, and a view of the conditions then existing, as illustrative of the legislature’s intention. The learned counsel for the plaintiff in error urge with much force that at the time the act of 1833 was passed, nearly all, if not all the banks of this State, were banks of issue; and it is true that most of the decisions of the Supreme Court upon this and kindred subjects deal with banks of issue. As we now have no banks of issue, it is contended that §306 has become obsolete, if indeed it is not completely .repealed by the passage of the acts of 1893 and 1898. We are unable to concur in this view. . While that construction of a statute is to be preferred which will preserve all the parts of the enactment under consideration, it is nevertheless a cardinal rule of construction that the legislative intent shall be effectuated, even though some of the verbiage of an enactment may have to be eliminated from the text. We [104]*104fail, however, to see any difference in conditions in construing the act as a whole, whether the law he considered in the light of the conditions surrounding it at the time of its passage, or of those existing when it was incorporated in the present code in 1895. And even the very learned and ingenious argument of counsel fails to convince us that the act is intended to operate only upon hanks of issue. The language of the statute under which the defendant was presented (Penal Code, §206) is as follows: “Bank insolvency deemed fraudulent. Every insolvency of a chartered bank, or refusal or failure to redeem its bills on demand, either with specie or with current bank-bills passing at par value, shall be deemed fraudulent, and the president and directors shall be severally punished by imprisonment and labor in the penitentiary for not less than one year nor longer than ten years: Provided, that the defendant may rej>el the presumption of fraud, by showing that the affairs of the bank have been fairly and legally administered, and generally with the same care and diligence that agents, receiving a commission for their services, are required and bound by law to observe; and, upon such showing, the jury shall acquit the prisoner.” How, -at the time when the Penal Code of 1833 (from which §206 of our present Penal Code was taken) was adopted by the passage of the act approved December 10, 1833 (39th section, 6th division, Acts 1833, p. 165), as well as when the act of 1838 was passed, and at the period when most of the decisions upon the subject were rendered, it is true that the banks chartered by the State were largely banks of issue. But we can not, on this account alone, concur in the argument of counsel for the plaintiff in error that the act in question, even at that time, was intended to relate only to banks of issue, nor hold, as contended for by counsel, that the language “refusal or failure to redeem its bills on demand” was used in the act merely as a definition or explanation of what the legislature meant by the word “insolvency.” It is significant that in the 44th section of the 6th division of the Penal Code of 1833 (Acts 1833, p. 165), reference is made to the 39th section of the 6th. division of the act, which is now §206 of the Penal Code. And we think this reference and the language employed therein alike show that it was not the intention of the legislature to treat the failure to redeem hills on the part of the bank as synonymous, in a criminal sense, with insolvency, although, so far as a civil lia[105]*105bility was concerned, a failure to redeem its bills might be a badge of insolvency.' And certainly the language of §44 of the Gth division of the Penal Code plainly shows that as to the bank there might be criminal insolvency apart from the insolvency indicated by failure to redeem its bills. The act of 1838, as its title indicated, was merely “An act to authorize the business of banking and to regulate the same.'” Acts 1838, p. 33. It contains no reference to any penalty against the officials of the bank. It is true that the failure or refusal to redeem bills of the bank might indicate insolvency on its part, but it would not necessarily have followed, even if a bank redeemed all of its bills, that it was not insolvent. The bills referred to in the act do not refer to nor include necessarily all of the indebtedness of the bank, for the word “bills/5 as used at the time of the passage of the act (and especially in reference to banks issuing currency), as construed by our Supreme Court, referred to the currency issued by the bank, and not to its general indebtedness. In Dougherty v. Western Bank, 13 Ga. 296, Judge Nisbet, delivering the opinion, says: “Bank bills subserve the purposes of money in the ordinary dealings of the people. They constitute the circulating medium of the country. They constitute its currency.55 And stress is laid on the absolute necessity, as a paramount object of interest and duty, of maintaining confidence in them as such.

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Bluebook (online)
66 S.E. 383, 7 Ga. App. 101, 1909 Ga. App. LEXIS 553, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/youmans-v-state-gactapp-1909.