Corcoran v. Snow Cattle Co.
| Decision Date | 26 February 1890 |
| Citation | 23 N.E. 727,151 Mass. 74 |
| Parties | CORCORAN v. SNOW CATTLE CO. |
| Court | United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court |
February 26, 1890
HEADNOTES
J.W Corcoran and Herbert Parker, for plaintiff.
A Norcross, H.C. Hartwell, and C.F. Baker, for defendant.
These actions are brought upon two promissory notes signed "SNOW CATTLE CO., A.N. Lowe, Treas.," payable to the order of I.A. Lowe & Co., a firm consisting of I.A. Lowe and his brother A.N. Lowe, and discounted by the Lancaster National Bank, of which the plaintiff is receiver. According to the testimony, which, however, the judge may have disbelieved, the notes in suit were renewals of similar notes, signed by A.N. Lowe, for the accommodation of another cattle company, called the "Lowe Cattle Company," in which the Lowes and McNeil, the president of the Lancaster bank, were interested, in pursuance of a scheme of the three to get them discounted at that bank. McNeil took the original notes, and got them discounted as proposed.
The judge has found that McNeil, who is now a fugitive from justice, was acting in his own interests, and in that of the Lowe Cattle Company, and did not act for the bank, and that the directors of the bank knew and approved of the discount, either at the time or after McNeil actually had procured the discount, but without knowledge or notice of any fact affecting the validity of the notes. He refused to rule that the bank was affected with McNeil's knowledge with reference to the notes which he procured to be discounted by it, and found for the plaintiff. The first question arises on the defendant's exception to this refusal. We are of opinion that it was correct. If McNeil went to the directors, and procured from them a discount of the notes in his hands, he representing for the moment the adverse party, then his knowledge was not the knowledge of the bank, and the case is governed by Innerarity v. Bank, 139 Mass. 332, 1 N.E. 282. This is one possible aspect of the facts, which is not excluded by the specific findings of the judge.
It is true that there is another aspect, which does not seem less probable; and that is that McNeil, in the first instance exchanged the bank's money for the notes himself. In that view, as it was through McNeil's hand that the bank became possessed of the notes, it would be much more difficult to maintain that the bank was not chargeable with his...
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