Johnson v. The Nat'l Exch. Bank Of Wheeling

• Citation: 124 W.Va. 157
• Decision Date: 17 March 1942
• Docket Number: (No. 9223)
• Court: Supreme Court of West Virginia
• Parties: Garcia I. Johnson v. The National Exchange Bank ofWheeling, Executor, etc.

124 W.Va. 157

Garcia I. Johnson

v.The National Exchange Bank of

Wheeling, Executor, etc.

(No. 9223)

Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia.

Submitted February 10, 1942.

Decided March 17, 1942.

Constitutional Law

Under West Virginia Constitution, Article VIII, Section 24, neither a commissioner of accounts nor a county court has jurisdiction to adjudicate a claim against a decedent's estate upon an alleged loan of personal property, where the evidence adduced in support thereof shows the property was taken and sold without the owner's consent.

Error to Circuit Court, Ohio County. Proceeding by Garcia I. Johnson against the National Exchange Bank of Wheeling, executor of the estate of Oliver J. Johnson, deceased, to establish a claim against the estate. To review a judgment of the Circuit Court affirming an order of the county court rejecting the claim, plaintiff brings error.

Judgment reversed; claim dismissed without prejudice.

Hall, Goodwin & Paul, for plaintiff in error. Thomas B. Foulk and James G. McClure, for defendant in error.

Riley, Judge:

Garcia I. Johnson prosecutes this writ of error, erroneously called an appeal in Code, 58-3-4 (see In re: Estate of T. J. Long, Deceased, 122 W. Va. 473, 10 S. E. 2d 791), to a judgment of the circuit court of Ohio County, West Virginia, affirming an order of the county court of said county, which order affirmed the action of a commissioner of accounts rejecting plaintiff in error's claim against the estate of Oliver J. Johnson, her deceased husband.

Garcia I. Johnson filed before a commissioner of accounts a proof of claim against the estate of her husband, in which she asserted that on October 16, 1939, her husband borrowed $4,000.00 of Home Owners' Loan Corporation bonds belonging to claimant, sold them through The National Exchange Bank of Wheeling, West Virginia, and used the proceeds for the purpose of buying real estate, with the intention on decedent's part of paying plaintiff the value thereof.

The record discloses that prior to 1937 decedent gave to claimant five $1,000.00 Home Owners' Loan Corporation bonds, payable to bearer. While the Johnsons were living in California she had the bonds in her possession, but disposed of one. Later they returned to Wheeling and the four bonds remaining unsold were kept there in Mrs. Johnson's safety deposit box at The National Exchange Bank until it became overcrowded with papers, when they were placed in decedent's deposit box, in an envelope marked "Property of Garcia I. Johnson." Both parties cut the bond coupons and, according to Mrs. Johnson's testimony, when decedent did the proceeds thereof were deposited either in her personal account or their joint bank account.

On October 16, 1939, the bonds having been called, decedent, without claimant's knowledge, cashed them and deposited the proceeds amounting to $4,075.00 in the joint bank account. On October 25, 1939, the amount of a check for $742.73 was deducted, leaving $12,113.85 in the account; and on the same day a deposit in the amount of $4,000.00 was made, evidently by a check drawn on decedent's individual account. Later three deposits, aggregating $375.40, were made, making a total in the joint account of $16,489.25. With this amount in the account, decedent drew a check thereon for $15,500.00 and used the proceeds thereof to purchase a house and lot in Wheeling, the title to which was taken in the names of "Oliver J. Johnson and Garcia I. Johnson, the survivor thereof to take the entire estate in fee simple." After the check for the purchase price was paid there remained in the account $989.25. When Mr. Johnson died a few months thereafter, the balance in the joint account was $2,104.25, which was turned over to claimant.

At the threshold of this case the jurisdiction of the commissioner of accounts to adjudicate the claim asserted by Mrs. Johnson is challenged. This Court has had occasion in several cases in recent years to enunciate to what extent and by what limitations the judicial process may be exercised by county courts. Point 3, Syllabus, in Boone v. Boone, 123 W. Va. 696, 17 S. E. 2d 790, (decided November 25, 1941,) reads as follows:

"County courts are of limited jurisdiction in the sense that their powers are prescribed by Section 24, Article VIII, West Virginia Constitution, but in all matters of probate, the appointment of the fiduciaries named in said Section 24, and the settlement of their accounts, they are courts of record, vested with judicial powers and unlimited in their jurisdiction where, in regular session, jurisdiction of both subject matter and parties is had."

In In re Brown's Estate, 123 W. Va. 504, 16 S. E. 2d 801 (1941), this Court held that where a county court was without jurisdiction in the first instance, a writ of error to its ruling to the circuit court did not thereby confer jurisdiction upon the latter tribunal. Tested by these principles, we revert to the quaere whether the county court, and incidentally the commissioner of accounts, acted within the scope of the jurisdiction vested under West Virginia Constitution, Article VIII, Section 24. An answer thereto must necessarily involve an analysis of the nature of Mrs. Johnson's claim.

It is clear that...