Johnson v. Blackmon

• Decision Date: 11 April 1918
• Docket Number: 7 Div. 928
• Citation: 201 Ala. 537,78 So. 891
• Parties: JOHNSON et al. v. BLACKMON.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

78 So. 891

201 Ala. 537

JOHNSON et al. v. BLACKMON.

7 Div. 928

Supreme Court of Alabama

April 11, 1918

Rehearing Denied May 9, 1918

Appeal from Circuit Court, Calhoun County; Hugh D. Merrill, Judge.

Bill by Ross Blackmon against W.H. Johnson and another for an interpleader, and for other relief. From a decree overruling demurrers to the bill, respondents appeal. Affirmed.

P.F Wharton, Harvey A. Emerson, and Rutherford Lapsley, all of Anniston, for appellants.

W.W Whiteside, of Anniston, for appellee.

SAYRE J.

Appellee filed this bill of interpleader to have determined the ownership of certain certificates of bank deposit claimed by the appellants. We need notice only two propositions:

1. Appellants contend that since appellee holds mere evidences of debt, while the banks hold the money and are answerable to the true owner, the bill is not necessary to the protection of appellee against any hazard, vexation, or expense of more than one action. The certificates of deposit in dispute are, in effect, negotiable promissory notes (2 Michie, Banks and Banking, 1271), and they promise payment upon their return or surrender properly indorsed. This stipulation for a return or surrender was for the safety and convenience of the banks, and constituted the certificates representatives or symbols of the deposits in such sort that even their mere delivery with the intention to pass title to the deposits would so operate in equity. Venturi v. Silvio, 197 Ala. 607, 73 So. 45. This consideration augmented perhaps the importance of the evidences of debt held by appellee as a bailee, a trustee of a sort, though without it we have no doubt appellee, if otherwise in the position of a disinterested stakeholder, should be allowed to secure a delivery of the certificates to their true owner, and his peace, by a bill of interpleader. Both the suggested claimants are claiming the same things of appellee through a common source--things valuable, if as evidence only, the delivery of which to the rightful owner may be compelled at the end of a lawsuit. That the banks, which also are brought in as parties defendant, by appropriate proceedings may have been able to protect themselves against the conflicting claims of the appellant defendants, furnishes no reason why appellee, in the absence of action by the banks, should not be allowed to maintain his bill for a similar purpose.

2. Appellants' next insistence is that appellee has incurred an independent liability to one of the claimants, and does not stand as an indifferent stakeholder between them--this for the reason, to state the substance of appellants' contention as we find it in the brief, that appellee as attorney and confidential agent for Thos. H. Owens, whose administrators on one hand claim the certificates of deposit and the money they represent, made deposits to the credit of Owens, and that while he was still such attorney and agent and when he learned that his client had indorsed the certificates to his sister ...