Walker Bank & Trust Company v. Saxon

• Decision Date: 03 December 1965
• Docket Number: No. 7981.,7981.
• Citation: 352 F.2d 90
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Tenth Circuit
• Parties: WALKER BANK & TRUST COMPANY, a corporation, Appellant, v. James J. SAXON, Comptroller of the Currency, and the First National Bank of Logan, of Logan, Utah, a National banking association, Appellees.

352 F.2d 90 (1965)

WALKER BANK & TRUST COMPANY, a corporation, Appellant, v. James J. SAXON, Comptroller of the Currency, and the First National Bank of Logan, of Logan, Utah, a National banking association, Appellees.

No. 7981.

United States Court of Appeals Tenth Circuit.

October 26, 1965.

Rehearing Denied December 3, 1965.

Joseph S. Jones, Salt Lake City, Utah (C. E. Henderson and Ray, Rawlins, Jones & Henderson, Salt Lake City, Utah, on the brief), for appellant.

David L. Rose, Atty., Dept. of Justice (John W. Douglas, Asst. Atty. Gen., William T. Thurman, U. S. Atty., and Kathryn H. Baldwin, Atty., Dept. of Justice, on the brief), for appellee James J. Saxon, Comptroller of Currency.

Ted S. Perry, of Perry & Perry, Logan, Utah, for appellee First Nat. Bank.

Brief filed by James F. Bell, Washington, D. C., amicus curiæ.^*

Before PHILLIPS, PICKETT and HILL, Circuit Judges.

HILL, Circuit Judge.

Appellant, Walker Bank and Trust Company, brought this action in the court below against appellees, the Comptroller of the Currency and The First National Bank of Logan, to obtain a declaratory judgment decreeing the action of the Comptroller, in authorizing The First National Bank of Logan to establish and operate a branch bank in Logan, to be void and of no legal effect.

Both defendants, by separate answers, alleged the validity of the questioned action of the Comptroller and the defendant bank, in addition, raised the affirmative defenses of (1) lack of standing to sue on the part of the plaintiff, (2) estoppel, and (3) that the Utah statute governing the establishment of branch banks is unconstitutional. The trial court, by memorandum opinion, held that the action of the Comptroller was valid and therefore found it unnecessary to pass on any of the affirmative defenses raised. Appellant appealed from that decision.

The facts pertinent to this appeal may be briefly stated. Appellant is a banking corporation organized under the laws of Utah, with its main bank located in Salt Lake City and with a branch bank located in Logan. Appellee, The First National Bank of Logan, is a banking corporation organized under the National Banking Act maintaining its principal bank in Logan, a city of the second class. On January 21, 1963, the appellee, Comptroller of the Currency, after application, issued a certificate to The First National Bank of Logan, authorizing it to establish and maintain a new and separate branch bank in Logan in addition to its main bank. Our sole question pertains to the authority of the Comptroller to issue such certificate.

We must first look to the Federal and State statutes pertinent to our question. The beginning point is 12 U.S.C. § 36(c), as amended, part of which provides:

"(c) A national banking association may, with the approval of the Comptroller of the Currency, establish and operate new branches: (1) Within the limits of the city, town, or village in which said association is situated, if such establishment and operation are at the time expressly authorized to State banks by the law of the State in question; * * *."

(c) (2) of § 36 is set forth below¹ and covers specifically so-called "outside branches", that is branches outside the city of the parent bank. Since our facts disclose that we are only concerned with (c) (1) or "inside branches", that is a branch bank located within the same city or town as the parent, we need not pass on (c) (2). Consideration of it in this case will be confined primarily to whatever light it might shed on (c) (1).

The Utah Code Ann., Title 7, Chap. 3, § 6 (1953 as amended) provides as follows:

"Except in cities of the first class, or within unincorporated areas of a county in which a city of the first class is located, no branch bank shall be established in any city or town in which is located a bank or banks, state or national, regularly transacting a customary banking business, unless the bank seeking to establish such branch shall take over an existing bank. No unit bank organized and operating at a point where there are other operating banks, state or national, shall be permitted to be acquired by another bank for the purpose of establishing a branch until such bank shall have been in operation as such for a period of five years."

The parties stipulated that Logan, Utah, is not a city of the first class. Therefore, it is perfectly clear that in Logan, a state bank could not establish a branch bank unless it took over an existing bank which had been in operation for five previous years. The Supreme Court of Utah in Walker Bank & Trust Co. v. Taylor, 15 Utah 2d 234, 390 P.2d 592 (1964) in construing this Utah statute in regard to Provo, Utah, which like Logan is a city of the second class, held that the only way a branch state bank could be established in a city of less than the first class having an existing unit bank is by taking over such existing bank. The obvious question then to decide is this: Does 12 U.S.C. § 36(c) (1) require the Comptroller to withhold his certificate of approval for the establishment of a national bank branch unless the branch is authorized in all respects by the law of the State in which the bank is located? The court below answered this question in the negative resting its opinion on the premise that § 36(c) (1) embodies only the requirement that inside branching be "expressly authorized" to State banks by State law without other conditions or restrictions of State law. In other words, even though a state bank in an identical situation with that presented here could not establish a branch bank, nevertheless a national bank could because state law generally sanctions branch banking. For the reasons hereinafter stated, we disagree with the trial court and hold that 12 U.S.C. § 36(c) (1) provides, as Congress intended it should, that the measuring stick of national branch banks is state law.

The history of national bank legislation spans over one hundred years. The present Act was derived from the Act of June 3, 1864, 13 Stat. 99, which was the National Bank Act. During this period, a multitude of changes in the Act have occurred as various economic problems were encountered. The provisions of the Act affecting branch banking entered the scene in 1927. Before that time branch banking was not generally sanctioned by Congress. See First National Bank in St. Louis v. State of Missouri, 263 U.S. 640, 44 S.Ct. 213, 68 L.Ed. 486. The Court there noted that the various state laws are binding on the dealings and contracts of national banks unless and until those laws conflict with federal laws or frustrate the purpose for which national banks were created or impair their efficiency. With national banks unable to branch, state banks did branch where state law permitted placing the national banks at a considerable disadvantage in the competitive banking field. It was against this background that Congress provided for national bank branches in the McFadden Act of 1927, 44 Stat. 1224, 1228 on branch banking.² Congressman McFadden reported on this bill from the Committee on Banking and Currency. In the beginning, the Committee Report states, "Some of the provisions in the bill extend and enlarge the powers of national banks, but only in the manner in which State banks and trust companies generally have been successfully operating within recent years."³ Later in the same report in discussing Section 8 it is stated, "This section recognizes the right of national banks to establish branches within those cities in which State banks have that privilege * * *." Finally, the report concludes in part with, "The cumulative effect of its provisions will produce a situation in the Federal reserve system where the rights of the national banks will be more nearly on a par with those of the State member banks." It seems clear to us at this juncture, that Congress meant in the McFadden Act to put national banks on a par with state banks insofar as branching was concerned, and to do this, they made state law controlling on the question of national bank branches. But our investigation of the history of branch banking cannot end here, for in 1932, owing to the financial crisis of those times, Congress again considered branching by national banks.

In 1932 the Senate considered a bill (Senate Bill 4412) which would allow branch banking by national banks irrespective of the various state laws. Senator Glass, the committee chairman, did point out at the time that this was a highly controversial subject.⁴ The main objection the opponents had to this bill concerning the branching provision was that it would constitute an invasion of the sovereign rights of the states to establish federal banks within their boundaries not approved by local policy. Apparently at this time, most states did not approve of branch banking.⁵ It was at this time that Senator Bratton⁶ of New Mexico offered his amendment to the bill which as modified was finally passed. We deem Senator Bratton's comments in regard to the bill highly noteworthy when in Vol. 76, Cong. Rec. p. 1449, he indicated that under existing law a national bank may engage in branch banking if the law of the state where the national bank is situated permits state banks to do so. Then in commenting on the Glass bill he said, "It is proposed to permit national banks to engage in branch banking whether the law of the State in which a given...