Fulton Nat Bank of Atlanta v. Hozier

• Decision Date: 02 March 1925
• Docket Number: No. 260,260
• Citation: 267 U.S. 276,69 L.Ed. 609,45 S.Ct. 261
• Parties: FULTON NAT. BANK OF ATLANTA v. HOZIER et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

267 U.S. 276

45 S.Ct. 261

69 L.Ed. 609

FULTON NAT. BANK OF ATLANTA

v HOZIER et al.

No. 260.

Submitted Jan. 27, 1925.

Decided March 2, 1925.

Messrs. Marion Smith, John D. Little, Arthur G. Powell, and Max F. Goldstein, all of Atlanta, Ga., for petitioner.

Mr. Arthur Heyman, of Atlanta, Ga., for respondents.

[Argument of Counsel from page 277 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice McREYNOLDS delivered the opinion of the Court.

This cause arises from an intervention petition filed by respondent Hozier in a proceeding to administer the assets of Imbrie & Co., a partnership, pending in the United States District Court, Northern District of Georgia. The following statement from the opinion of that court (287 F. 158, 159) sufficiently indicates the material issues:

'On March 3, 1921, in the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, was filed a creditors' bill against Imbrie & Co., stock and bond dealers and brokers, citizens of New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, whose principal place of business was New York. Receivers were appointed. On the same day, in the superior court of Fulton county, Ga., other creditors, citizens of Georgia, sought and obtained a receiver for assets of Imbrie & Co. in Georgia connected with a branch office operated in Atlanta. On March 7, 1921, the New York receivers, by direction of the New York court, applied for ancillary receivership in this court and were, with the state court receiver, made such ancillary receivers. On March 8th Imbrie & Co. removed to this court the case in the Fulton superior court. The two proceedings were then consolidated by consent, and numerous interventions have been allowed in this court, among them that of I. S. Hozier. His claim, in brief, is that he gave Imbrie & Co. in Atlanta, on February 21, 1921, a check for $2,656.13, to be used as his brokers in buying certain stocks; that Imbrie & Co. deposited it to their credit in Fulton National Bank on February 23d; that the proceeds of its collection were still to the credit of Imbrie & Co. at said bank, though in equity belonging to Hozier, when the firm failed without having bought the stock, whereupon Fulton National Bank, on March 3d, offset certain notes it held against Imbrie & Co. against the deposit, absorbing it. Hozier prays that the bank be made a party and be required to pay the $2,656.13 to the receivers or to him. By an amendment he asks also a judgment against the estate in the receivers' hands, with a first lien or otherwise, if the bank could not be required to repay the money to them for him. This intervention was allowed, the bank was made a party and the issues made by answers to the intervention referred to a master. Exceptions to his report raise three principal questions: First, has this court, as a federal court, jurisdiction of this controversy; second, should it pass upon it, or remand the parties to the primary jurisdiction in New York; third, on the merits has the bank the right to make the set-off as against Hozier.'

The trial court held that it had jurisdiction to entertain the intervention petition as a dependent controversy, and decreed:

'That the receivers in the above-stated consolidated cause recover from the Fulton National Bank of Atlanta the principal sum of twenty-six hundred fifty-six and 13/100 dollars ($2,656.13), together with interest at the rate of seven per cent. (7%) per annum from the date of this judgment, and upon the recovery of same, that said receivers pay said amount to I. S. Hozier, intervener, or his counsel of record.'

The Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed this judgment. The cause is here by...