Collins v. City Nat. Bank & Trust Co. Of Danbury.

• Decision Date: 13 July 1944
• Parties: COLLINS v. CITY NAT. BANK & TRUST CO. OF DANBURY.
• Court: Connecticut Supreme Court

131 Conn. 167

38 A.2d 582

COLLINS

v.CITY NAT. BANK & TRUST CO. OF DANBURY.

Supreme Court of Errors of Connecticut.

July 13, 1944.

Appeal from Superior Court, Fairfield County; Comly and Murphy, Judges.

Action by Martin M. Collins against the City National Bank & Trust Company of Danbury to recover damages for plaintiff's arrest and detention resulting from defendant's negligent dishonor of his check, brought to the superior court in Fairfield County, where a demurrer to the complaint was overruled, Comley, J.; and the issues were tried to the jury before Murphy, J. Verdict and judgment for plaintiff and appeal by defendant.

No error.

Leonard McMahon, of Danbury, for appellant (defendant).

John J. Hunt, of Bridgeport, for appellee (plaintiff).

Before MALTBIE, C. J., and BROWN, JENNINGS, ELLS, and DICKENSON, JJ.

JENNINGS, Judge.

The basic issue on this appeal may be stated as follows: Is a bank liable to its depositor in damages for his arrest and imprisonment on a charge of obtaining money under false pretenses, when it has erroneously and negligently returned his check to the bank which cashed it in the first instance with the notation ‘no account‘? The defendant raised this issue by a motion to expunge, a demurrer, requests to charge, exceptions to the charge as delivered and a motion to set aside the verdict, but the fundamental question is the same in each instance and its determination will dispose of all of these assignments of error. Other objections to the denial of the motion to set aside the verdict can also be conveniently considered in this connection.

The jury might reasonably have found the following facts: On May 16, 1942, the plaintiff was employed at a state automobile inspection lane at Canaan. On that day he wrote to the defendant in Danbury stating that he would like to open a checking account and inclosing checks and cash amounting to $203.62. The letter was signed in his own handwriting. In reply, the defendant wrote the plaintiff acknowledging the receipt of the money and saying that a checking account had been opened in his name in the amount stated. It inclosed a signature card and requested the plaintiff to return it. At the same time it mailed to the plaintiff a checkbook and blank deposit slips. The plaintiff learned that the lanes were to be closed down and he did not return the signature card because he wanted a permanent address before doing so and he did not intend to cash any checks until he returned to Danbury.

On May 26, the plaintiff wrote a check payable to cash for $3.62, which he cashed at the Canaan National Bank the next day. The check reached the defendant through the clearing house on May 29 and it erreneously and negligently returned it through the clearing house with a slip attached marked ‘no account.’ The head bookkeeper believed that it was a crime for a person to draw a check on a bank where he had no account and realized that by returning the check so marked he was exposing the plaintiff to prosection for a crime. The check with the slip attached reached the Canaan bank on June 3. The teller who had cashed it registered a formal complaint at the state police barracks and turned over the check and slip after having been told that he would have to be the complaining witness in court. Thereupon the state police secured a warrant for the plaintiff's arrest, charging him with obtaining money by false pretenses under General Statutes, § 6368. The plaintiff was found at the Ridgefield police barracks where he had gone to be certified as an auxiliary state policeman. He was arrested, driven about sixty-five miles to Canaan in a police car and locked in a cell for about two hours, when he was released on posting a $100 cash bond. Over night the police learned that the check was good and the plaintiff was found not guilty in the trial justice court and released. The check was paid eventually.

The defendant was sued in negligence. Negligence is a breach of duty. A primary duty of a commercial bank to its depositors is to honor the latter's checks when they are good, 9 C.J.S., Banks and Banking, 684, § 342; before refusing to do so, it should use reasonable care to ascertain whether the depositor has an account with it. It was for the jury to say whether this duty had been breached. The test to be applied was, ‘would the ordinary man in the defendant's position, knowing what he knew or should have known, anticipate that harm of the general nature of that suffered was likely to result?’ Orlo v. Connecticut Co., 128 Conn. 231, 237, 21 A.2d 402, 404; Przwgocki v. Wikris, 130 Conn. 419, 422, 34 A.2d 879; Scorpion v. American-Republican, Inc., 131 Conn. 42, 46, 37 A.2d 802. From what has been said, particularly from the belief of the defendant that, by returning the plaintiff's check marked ‘no account,’ it was exposing him to criminal prosecution, it is apparent that the conclusion of the jury that the defendant was negligent as to this plaintiff was a reasonable one.

Most of the discussion in the trial court and this court turned on the question of proximate cause. Contributory negligence was not in issue, and the final necessary element in the plaintiff's case was to prove that the negligence of the defendant was a substantial factor in causing his injuries. Mahoney v. Beatman, 110 Conn. 184, 195, 147 A. 762, 66 A.L.R. 1121. This is a question of fact unless reasonable men could find no causal connection. Id.; DeMunda v. Loomis, 127 Conn. 313, 315, 16 A.2d 578; Colligan v. Reilly, 129 Conn. 26, 30, 26 A.2d 231. It was a question of fact in this case. After the original erroneous and negligent act of the defendant, the arrest of the plaintiff followed as a natural and probable consequence. Relying on the information received from the defendant, the Canaan bank lodged a complaint with the police. The complaint with the supporting evidence was sufficient to justify the latter in securing a warrant and arresting the plaintiff. Looking back from the injury to the negligent act, the jury reasonably could have found the necessary causal connection. This is the correct method of determining the existence of proximate cause. Mitnick v. Whelan Bros., 115 Conn. 650, 163 A. 414; Corey v. Phillips, 126 Conn. 246, 255, 10 A.2d 370; Mourison v. Hansen, 128 Conn. 62, 66, 20 A.2d 84, 136 A.L.R. 413; Restatement, 2 Torts, § 433b, comments e, f; Bohlen, Studies in the Law of Torts, p. 261; Seavey, 48 Yale L. J. 390, 403; and see Palsgraf v. Long Island R. Co., 248 N.Y. 339, 346, 162 N.E. 99, 59 A.L.R. 1253. ‘Instances of torts involving improbable or unforeseen consequences are frequent, and in practice our own courts do not deny recovery for them as a legal cause of the consequence of the tort.’ Mahoney v. Beatman, supra, 110 Conn. 191, 147 A. 765, 66 A.L.R. 1121. The acts of the Caanan bank and the police were not, as a matter of law, either superseding causes or intervening forces in the sense that they broke the connection between the negligent act and the injury. Lombardi v. Wallad, 98...