Provine v. First Nat. Bank of Honey Grove ( 1915 )

WILLSON, C. J.

Appellant, plaintiff below, sought and recovered judgment against appellee R. H. Coleman for the sum of $402, being the principal sum and interest thereon due on a promissory note for $450 payable to her order October 15, 1914, made by said Coleman February 28,1914. She also sought, but was denied, judgment against the appel-lee bank for the sum of $380, the value of certain cotton which she alleged said bank wrongfully converted to its own use at a time when she had a landlord’s lien thereon.

The contention made here is that the judgment is erroneous in so far as it denied to appellant a recovery against the bank.

It appeared from the testimony that on February 28, 1914, appellant leased certain land to Coleman for that year, and that the note sued upon represented the rent lie agreed to pay for same. Coleman gathered ten bales of cotton off the land. On September 26, 1914, he removed five of the bales therefrom and stored them, with six bales grown by him on other land, in a warehouse in Honey Grove; and on October 16, 1914, he removed the other five bales from the land and stored them, with twelve bales grown by him on other land, in the same warehouse. At the time he so stored the cotton Coleman took the warehouseman’s receipt therefor, and had the cotton insured in his own name as the owner thereof. The receipts were delivered by Coleman to the appellee bank, and that it thereafterwards held same for him. On December 5, 1914, Coleman sold the ten bales of cotton grown by him on appellant’s land and the eighteen bales grown by him on other land to Scott Bros., to whom he then directed the appellee bank to have same transferred. The appellee bank had the cotton transferred as .directed, and, having collected of Scott Bros. $960 they had agreed to pay for same, on that day credited Coleman with that sum and delivered to him a deposit slip covering same. Coleman was indebted to the appellee bank, and on December 7, 1914, paid it a part of the sum he owed it by delivering to it a check for $880 of the $960 deposited with it to his credit as the proceeds of the sale of the cotton. On the same day he checked out to himself the $S0 remaining of the $960. In the spring of 1914 appellant sold and indorsed the note sued upon to the Planters’ National Bank, and the bank was the owner of same at the time Coleman sold the cotton to Scott Bros, as stated. Afterward appellant repurchased tlie note of the Planters’ National Bank, and owned it at the time she commenced her suit.

[1] On the facts stated it is clear, we think, that appellant’s contention should he overruled. In support of the contention appellant insists that, because the cotton was stored in a warehouse at the time Scott Bros, purchased it, a landlord’s lien existed on it in her favor by virtue of art. 5477, Rev. St., as amended by the act October 9, 1914 (Gen. Laws, 2d Sp. Sess. 33d Leg., p. 33), and section 42 of the act September 26, 1914 (Same Laws, p. 32), notwithstanding more than one month had elapsed since the cotton was removed from the rented premises. Whether the insistence should be sustained or not will not be determined, but the applicability of the statutes referred to may, it is suggested, well be doubted, in view of a stipulation in the warehouseman’s receipts that they were negotiable under his rules. As we view the case, if it should be conceded that such a lien existed on the cotton, while a cause of action, as for a conversion may have arisen against Scott Bros., the purchasers of the cotton, one did not arise in appellant’s favor against the appellee bank. It did not buy the cotton, and, so far as we can determine from the record, was guilty of no actionable wrong to appellant.

The judgment is affirmed.

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