Kissam v. Anderson

145 U.S. 435 (1892)

KISSAM
v.
ANDERSON.

No. 202.

Supreme Court of United States.

Argued March 11, 14, 1892. Decided May 16, 1892. ERROR TO THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF NEW YORK.

Mr. Joseph H. Choate and Mr. George Zabriskie for plaintiffs in error. Mr. John E. Burrill was with them on the brief.

Mr. Benjamin H. Bristow for defendant in error.

MR. JUSTICE BREWER stated the case as above, and delivered the opinion of the court.

We shall not stop to inquire as to the propriety of the rulings, so far as they went to charge the defendants with liability for the moneys obtained from the Albion Bank; for, on the other ground we think a new trial must be ordered, and it is impossible to foresee what the developments may be on that trial.

The court distinctly ruled, as matter of law, that the defendants were not entitled to credit for the moneys deposited in the Third National Bank to the credit of the Albion Bank, and submitted no question to the jury in respect thereof. The principle upon which the court acted is thus stated by counsel for plaintiff in his brief:

"It is settled by abundant authority that where one has taken the property of another damages are not mitigated by showing merely that the wrongdoer returned the property without the consent of the owner or applied it upon the owner's debts. It must appear still further that the owner consented to such action or that the proceeds were so applied under legal process without connivance of the wrongdoer. ``A stranger could not take the property of his neighbor, have it sold under process, and apply the proceeds in discharging the debts of his neighbor, and then claim the right to have such payments received as a set-off, or in mitigation of the damages done by the trespass.' McAfee v. Crofford, 13 How. 447, 456."

We think that principle does not control in this case. Defendants returned this money to the Albion Bank. They deposited it with the Third National Bank, the correspondent of the Albion Bank, and the bank from which they received the money on the checks from the Albion Bank. In fact, therefore, the money was placed where it was before it was taken — in the possession and under the control of the Albion Bank. Not only that, the Third National Bank, in its due course of business, by monthly reports, informed the Albion Bank that they had received this money, and held it subject to its order; and it was subsequently used by the Albion Bank in drafts drawn by it in favor of other parties. If it be said that no officer of the Albion Bank knew of these deposits except Warner, the wrongdoer, and that he subsequently drew out most of these moneys in drafts to further other wrongs, the reply is, that the other officers and directors of the Albion Bank were chargeable with knowledge of these deposits. If, through their negligence, they did not in fact know, that is a matter for which the Albion Bank, and not the defendants, were responsible. Kissam, Whitney & Co. had no supervision over its affairs, no knowledge as to how those affairs were managed. They were not called upon to go to Albion and hunt up the various officers and directors, and inform them, one by one, personally, that these moneys had been deposited to their credit in the Third National Bank. It was enough that they deposited them, and that that bank, in the regular course of business, by monthly statements, informed the Albion Bank that it received and held those moneys. The learned Circuit Judge seemed to be of the opinion, that as they had assisted Warner in withdrawing these funds from the bank, they could not escape responsibility, unless the sum total of his defalcations was reduced by their deposits to an amount less than that received from him. In his opinion overruling the motion for a new trial, he thus expressed himself: "Here all the money returned by Warner was insufficient to replace his defalcations by an amount much larger than the sum sought to be recovered of the defendants, and the bank had no knowledge that he had returned anything to replace what he had misapplied until he had again misappropriated it. It is not unjust or unreasonable to compel the defendants to restore such of the funds of the bank as they received when they are unable to prove that the bank was not directly or ultimately a loser in consequence of their acts. It may be that Warner would have misappropriated the money of the bank in other ways if they had refused to receive the checks, but certainly one temptation would not have been in his path if he had found that he could not use the paper of the bank for his speculations with the same facility as though it were his own money." But surely they cannot be held for his subsequent wrong-doing. If they have returned a part of that they assisted him in wrongfully withdrawing, they are pro tanto relieved from responsibility, and are not to be chargeable with his after misconduct, in respect to which they had no part. It will not do to say that they put the money where he could check it out, and therefore are responsible for what he did with it. They deposited it to the credit of the Albion Bank, and it was for the officers and directors of that bank to take care of its deposits. The rule might be different if Warner, the cashier of the Albion Bank, was the only officer authorized to draw on the Third National Bank, or charged with knowledge of the state of the account; but the president and teller had equal authority, and were equally chargeable with knowledge; in fact, it appears that these officers did draw drafts on the New York bank and thus diminished the total amount of deposits, and the other directors, also, were under some obligation to know the affairs of the bank; and it will not do to say that the bank can ignore the negligence of all its officers and profit by their omission of duty. At the least, it was a question to go to the jury whether the officers of the bank, other than Warner, in the exercise of reasonable and proper care, could have ascertained that these moneys had been deposited to the account of the Albion Bank, and would or would not have accepted such deposits as the return of the moneys to the bank.

For the error in this respect, the judgment must be

Reversed, and the case remanded for a new trial.