Gilbert v. United States, 478

• Decision Date: 25 June 1962
• Docket Number: No. 478,478
• Citation: 82 S.Ct. 1399,8 L.Ed.2d 750,370 U.S. 650
• Parties: R. Milo GILBERT, Petitioner, v. UNITED STATES
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

370 U.S. 650

82 S.Ct. 1399

8 L.Ed.2d 750

R. Milo GILBERT, Petitioner,

v UNITED STATES.

No. 478.

Argued April 10, 1962.

Decided June 25, 1962.

Fred Okrand and Albert A. Dorn, Los Angeles, Cal., for petitioner.

Kirby W. Patterson, Washington, D.C., for respondent.

Mr. Justice HARLAN delivered the opinion of the Court.

Petitioner, an accountant whose business included acting for others in federal income tax matters, was charged in a thirty-five-count indictment with violations of 26 U.S.C. § 7206(2), 26 U.S.C.A. § 7206(2), 18 U.S.C. § 1001, 18 U.S.C.A. § 1001, and 18 U.S.C. § 495, 18 U.S.C.A. § 495, in that he had allegedly falsified his clients' returns (§ 7206(2)), forged their endorsements on government tax-refund checks (§ 495), and, by endorsing such checks, had made false statements as to a matter within the jurisdiction of a government agency (§ 1001). The jury convicted on thirty-one counts and acquitted on four others. On appeal, 9 Cir., 291 F.2d 586, 597, the judgment of conviction was set aside as to twenty-nine counts, and a new trial ordered, because the Court of Appeals found that evidence used by the Government in support of these counts had been illegally seized. The judgment as to the remaining two counts (Nos. 21 and 22), charging the petitioner with having forged the endorsements of Daniel H. Bartfield and Charline R. Bartfield on two government refund checks (18 U.S.C. § 495, 18 U.S.C.A. § 495), was affirmed.¹

It was stipulated at the trial that petitioner had endorsed in his own handwriting the two checks, made out to:

'Daniel H & Charlene R Bartfield

c/o R Milo Gilbert

519 Taft Building

Hollywood 28 Calif'

in the following manner:

'Daniel H. Bartfield

Charline R. Bartfield

R. Milo Gilbert, Trustee'² Petitioner claimed that a written power of attorney, allegedly signed by both Bartfields in his office, authorized him to endorse tax-refund checks, and that 'Trustee' after his name served to designate the particular bank account where he deposited and held all client-refunds until December of each year, against the possibility of there being a refund adjustment and until his contingent fee was settled. The Bartfields acknowledged that the signatures on the power of attorney were theirs, but disclaimed recollection of signing the instrument, and denied that they ever authorized petitioner orally or in writing to receive or endorse checks.³

On these premises the Court of Appeals, concluding that the evidence was sufficient to permit the jury to find that petitioner had endorsed the checks without authority (a conclusion which for present purposes we accept), held that one who endorses a government check by signing the name of the payee and then his own, as agent, when in fact he has no such authority, is guilty of forgery under § 495. We granted certiorari to consider the correctness of that view of the statute. 368 U.S. 816, 82 S.Ct. 93, 7 L.Ed.2d 23. While not mentioned in the petition for certiorari, though discussed in the briefs on the merits, the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, after the Court of Appeals' decision in the present case, held that 'forgery' under § 495 does not embrace a purported, but misrepresented, agency endorsement (hereafter called simply an 'agency endorsement'). Selvidge v. United States, 290 F.2d 894. For reasons given in this opinion we agree with the Tenth Circuit.

I.

At the outset we are met with the Government's suggestion that the statutory construction question need not be faced in this case. Before the Court of Appeals, as in the petition for certiorari, it was assumed by all that the two checks (which after the trial and before the case reached this Court had for some reason become mislaid) had been endorsed 'by R. Milo Gilbert, Trustee.' (Emphasis added.) That was a mistaken assumption for, as the checks themselves show (supra, 370 U.S., p. 651, 82 S.Ct., p. 1400), there was no 'by' before 'R. Milo Gilbert, Trustee.'

Arguing that the jury might have found that the word 'Trustee' after Gilbert's signature did not purport to indicate an agency endorsement, but was merely intended as a designation for routing the checks for deposit in one of Gilbert's 'client' bank accounts, the Government suggests that a plain case of forgery is made out, and the agency-endorsement question is not in truth presented by the record.

We cannot so easily dispose of the case. For accepting the premise that the jury could have found that petitioner did not purport to act in a representative capacity when he endorsed the checks, it was surely also permissible for the jury to find that petitioner had purported to make an agency endorsement in both instances, and we are thus left to speculate on which theory its verdict in fact rested. Indeed the record before us seems to indicate that this aspect of the case was tried, at least primarily, on an agency-endorsement theory. The trial judge's instructions to the jury on this phase of the case were at best opaque. Having refused to instruct the jury that an agency endorsement was not forgery under § 495,⁴ he at no point undertook to explain the difference between an agency and a nonagency endorsement.⁵ Nor can we perceive any force in the Government's further suggestion that the jury's verdict on these two counts might have rested simply on the theory that in describing himself as 'Trustee' the petitioner had made a fictious endorsement, in that he had never occupied that status. Since the charge was that petitioner had forged the names of the Bartfields, not of their agent, this is but another way of describing the agency-endorsement version of the transaction.

In this posture of things the Government's proposal that we bypass decision of the question that brought the case here must be rejected. If an agency endorsement does not constitute forgery under § 495, the petitioner is at least entitled to a new trial under proper jury instructions.

II.

The original predecessor of § 495 was enacted in 1823, 3 Stat. 771, and in respects here pertinent has throughout the intervening years been in substantially the same form as § 495. There is no significant legislative history illuminating § 495 or any of its predecessors. In deciding whether 'forges' under § 495 embraces agency endorsements, it is therefore important to inquire, as the Government recognizes, into the common-law meaning of forgery at the time the 1823 statute was enacted. For in the absence of anything to the contrary it is fair to assume that Congress used that word in the statute in its common-law sense.

In 1847 it was decided in the English case of Regina v. White, 2 Car. & K. 404, 175 Eng.Rep. 167 (Nisi Prius, Book 6), that 'indorsing a bill of exchange under a false assumption of authority to indorse it per procuration, is not forgery, there being no false making.'⁶ 2 Car. & K., at 412, 175 Eng.Rep., at 170 (Nisi Prius, Book 6). This to be sure was some twenty-four years after the 1823 predecessor of § 495 came on the books. The Government says that this English decision should be regarded as but an ill-advised and temporary departure from the earlier common law which was 'soon recognized' and remedied by the passage of the Forgery Act of 1861, 24 & 25 Vict., c. 98, § 24, defining forgery to include unauthorized signings 'per procuration,' with intent to defraud.⁷ The Government draws from earlier English authority, 2 East, Pleas of the Crown, 850—859 (1803); 1 Hawkins, Pleas of the Crown, c. 70; Coke, Third Institute (1797 ed.) 169; 4 Blackstone, Commentaries, 247, the conclusion that agency endorsements did constitute forgery under the common law as it existed when the 1823 American statute was passed.

This view cannot readily be accepted. The fifteen judges who participated in Regina v. White unanimously decided that case as they did only after considering the earlier English authorities. Such of those authorities as are now relied on by the Government are by no means as clear as the Government would have them. Thus Lord East's comments, supra, at p. 852, were: 'Forgery at common law denotes a false making (which includes every alternation of or addition to a true instrument), a making malo animo, of any written instrument for the purpose of fraud and deceit. * * * (The ancient and modern authorities) all consider the offence as consisting in the false and fraudulent making or altering of such and such instruments.' (Emphasis in original). Coke,⁸ Hawkins,⁹ and Blackstone,¹⁰ who are also cited by the Government, are no more persuasive towards the Government's view. The more inclusive definition of forgery contained in the English statutes, supra, 370 U.S., p. 655, 82 S.Ct., p. 1402 and note 7, proves not that Regina v. White was mistaken in its view of the common law but only that a broader definition was deemed desirable by Parliament. And finally, the Regina v. White view of forgery at common law was early accepted in a federal case as representing the English common law. In re Extradition of Tully, C.C., 20 F. 812. The same view of forgery has since been followed in most of the state and federal courts in this country. See, e.g., People v. Bendit, 111 Cal. 274, 276—280, 43 P. 901, 902, 31 L.R.A. 831; Pasadena Investment Co. v. Peerless Casualty Co., 132 Cal.App.2d 328, 331, 282 P.2d 124, 125, 52 A.L.R.2d 203; State v. Lamb, 198 N.C. 423, 425—426, 152 S.E. 154, 155—156; Dexter Horton Nat. Bank of Seattle v. United States Fidelity & Guaranty Co., 149 Wash. 343, 346—351, 270 P. 799, 800—802; Greathouse v. United States, 4 Cir., 170 F.2d 512, 514; Marteney v. United States, 10 Cir., 216 F.2d 760, 763 764.

The foregoing considerations combine to lead us to the conclusion that 'forge' in § 495 should not be taken to include an agency endorsment. So the Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit has held in Selvidge v. United States, supra, the only case in the lower federal courts squarely dealing with the point,¹¹ and we perceive no sound...