Florida Nat. Bank of Jacksonville v. Exchange Bank of St. Augustine, P--277
| Decision Date | 08 May 1973 |
| Docket Number | No. P--277,P--277 |
| Citation | 277 So.2d 313 |
| Parties | The FLORIDA NATIONAL BANK OF JACKSONVILLE, a banking corporation, Appellant, v. The EXCHANGE BANK OF ST. AUGUSTINE, a state banking corporation, Appellee. |
| Court | Florida District Court of Appeals |
Wayne H. Perrine and J. W. Harrell, of Harrell & Perrine, Jacksonville, for appellant.
Upchurch & Upchurch, St. Augustine, and John J. Upchurch, of Van Wert & Upchurch, Daytona Beach, for appellee.
Appellant seeks reversal of a final judgment in the amount of $3,700.00, which represents the amount of a check drawn on June 27, 1968, by one Edward Reizen on his account with Community National Bank and Trust of Bal Harbour.
The check was payable to Upchurch and Upchurch and was deposited in their trust account with appellee, Exchange Bank of St. Augustine. Appellee forwarded the check for collection to appellant, Florida National Bank of Jacksonville. The check was a counter check and had not been encoded. The name Community National Bank had been handwritten by Reizen on the top of the check. Appellant encoded the check with a magnetic ink routing code symbol to prepare the check for sorting by the Federal Reserve Bank's automatic processing machine. However, the routing symbol printed on the check by appellant was that of Peoples National Bank of Bay Harbor Islands because the American Bankers Association Handbook customarily used in banking circles for the purpose of ascertaining routing numbers failed to list any bank in Bal Harbour, Florida, and the encoding clerk assumed that the intended bank was in Bay Harbor Islands, Florida, where the Peoples National Bank was located. The check was received by the Bay Harbor Islands bank on July 8, 1968, and returned to the Federal Reserve Bank because Reizen had no account there. The check was apparently lost in the mail and on August 30, 1968, the Federal Reserve forwarded a photostat of the check to the correct bank, Community National Bank of Bal Harbour. Reizen refused to authorize Community National Bank to honor the photostatic copy. After learning of this, appellant requested that appellee obtain payment in order that it might adjust its account with the Federal Reserve. Appellee refused to pay and the Federal Reserve Bank charged the $3,700 back to appellant. Appellant then charged the amount back to appellee.
Appellant contends, inter alia, that the misencoding of the check by one of its employees was not the proximate cause of the loss. We agree.
It appears from the record that if the check had not been lost in the mail, the Federal Reserve Bank would have transmitted the check to Community National Bank no later than July 15, 1968. If the check had been received by that date, it would have been paid, as the Reizen account carried a balance sufficient to pay the check until August 16, 1968. Therefore, the injury was occasioned by the loss in transit and not the misencoding.
It is well established that in order to prove negligence it must be shown that the wrongful act was the proximate cause of the injury, absent any efficient intervening causes. In order for an intervening cause to supersede a prior negligence, it must be capable of bringing about a direct injurious result independent of the prior action. It must be the cause which interrupts the sequence of events, prevents the natural result of the original act, and reasonably might not have been anticipated, 57 Am.Jur.2d, Negligence, § 193.
If the intervening event was foreseeable by the original wrongdoer, then it does not supersede the original negligence. For a thorough analysis of proximate cause, see this court's opinion in Pope v. Pinkerton-Hay Lumber Co., 120 So.2d 227 (Fla.App.1960).
In the case sub judice, the loss in transit was independent of the erroneous encoding. It interrupted the logical sequence of events in that if the check had not been lost in the mail it would have been received by the correct bank and paid. Also, it cannot be said that the loss in transit was a foreseeable consequence of the original misencoding. Although the check was negligently encoded, there is no evidence that the encoding was the proximate cause of the injury in light of the well established principles of intervening cause and foreseeability.
Appellee's reliance on the theory of concurrent negligence as expressed in De La Concha v. Pinero, 104 So.2d 25 (Fla.1958), is also without merit. The Supreme Court in De La Concha stated:
'It is universally agreed that if damages are caused by the...
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Exchange Bank of St. Augustine v. Florida Nat. Bank of Jacksonville
...review of the decision of the District Court of Appeal, First District, in the case of Florida National Bank of Jacksonville v. The Exchange Bank of St. Augustine (1973), 277 So.2d 313, wherein the District Court reversed a jury's verdict and judgment thereon in the sum of $3,700 in favor o......