Lockney State Bank v. Damron

• Citation: 179 S.W. 552
• Decision Date: 23 October 1915
• Docket Number: (No. 829.)
• Parties: LOCKNEY STATE BANK v. DAMRON.
• Court: Texas Court of Appeals

179 S.W. 552

LOCKNEY STATE BANK v. DAMRON.

(No. 829.)

Court of Civil Appeals of Texas. Amarillo.

October 23, 1915.

Appeal from District Court, Motley County; Jo A. P. Dickson, Judge.

Suit by Mrs. S. A. Damron against the Lockney State Bank. Decree in favor of plaintiff, and defendant appeals. Affirmed.

Crudgington & Works, of Amarillo, for appellant. T. T. Bouldin, of Matador, for appellee.

HENDRICKS, J.

The appellee, Mrs. S. A. Damron, instituted this suit against the appellant, the Lockney State Bank, for the purpose of canceling a note on its face for the sum of $3,300, which at the time of the institution of the suit had not matured. Mrs. Damron, who signed the note, with her mark as signature, at the time was about 70 years of age, ignorant, uneducated, and practically unable to read and write. At the time of the execution of the note D. F. Jones, the grandson of Mrs. Damron, was indebted to the Lockney State Bank, and, with Garrison, cashier of the bank, visited the home of Mrs. Damron, several miles in the country, for the purpose of obtaining the signature of his grandmother upon the particular note. Mrs. Damron testified that antecedent to the execution of the note Mr. Garrison, the cashier of the bank, represented to her that the note was for $1,700, and that he had also signed the note, and that if she would sign it he would stand between her and all danger, and that if such representations had not been made by Mr. Garrison she would not have executed the paper, that they (evidently meaning Jones and Garrison) represented to her that this was an extension of another note, and that they simply wanted a little longer time upon the obligation and had plenty of cattle to settle the same. She said that she had confidence in Mr. Garrison, knew the position that he held in the bank at Lockney as cashier, and thought he was reliable and possessed of some property, that she understood that Mr. Garrison was representing the bank, and that she signed the note in order that Mr. Garrison could get the amount of money represented by the note from the bank, and further testified:

"I told them when I signed it [the note] that I would not pay it at all, and they took it with that understanding — that I was not to pay for it."

The trial court, without the assistance of a jury, canceled the note, and the assignment which we will discuss is one, in effect, that, Mrs. Damron having testified that she had an understanding that she was not to pay the note when they took it, and knowing that said note was being executed for the purpose of securing money from the bank for Garrison, she was guilty of such fraud as to preclude a recovery. The authorities principally cited to sustain this view are Jines v. Astle, 170 S. W. 1081, Rushing v. Bank, 162 S. W. 469, and Hawkins v. Bank, 175 S. W. 166, with the additional case of Cotton v. Rand, 93 Tex. 7, 51 S. W. 842, 53 S. W. 343, decided by the Supreme Court; the first three cases having been decided by this court.

Appellant also, as a subsidiary proposition under the above assignment, contends that Garrison having an interest in the appellant bank, that no representations or fraud of Garrison could be imputed to the bank.

There may be a phase of this case that Garrison, reckoning it upon the representations he made to Mrs. Damron, if he informed her, and she so believed, that this was his note to the bank, and he was individually obtaining the money, such antagonism of interest, if it were true, might exist. However, in passing upon appellant's secondary proposition, there exists the applicable principle that a person or a corporation cannot retain an advantage secured by fraud of one of its agents and accept the benefits of his act without also adopting the means by which the advantage was procured, although the principal may have had no knowledge at the time what those means were. American Nat. Bank v. Cruger, 91 Tex. 446, 44 S. W. 278; Allen v. Garrison, 92 Tex. 546, 50 S. W. 335; Cowboy State Bank & Trust Co. v. Guinn, 160 S. W. 1105; Commonwealth Bonding & Casualty Co....