Merchants'-Laciede Nat. Bank v. Troy Grocery Co.

• Decision Date: 23 November 1905
• Citation: 144 Ala. 605,39 So. 476
• Parties: MERCHANTS' LACLEDE NAT. BANK OF ST. LOUIS, MO., v. TROY GROCERY CO.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

39 So. 476

144 Ala. 605

MERCHANTS' LACLEDE NAT. BANK OF ST. LOUIS, MO., v. TROY GROCERY CO.

Supreme Court of Alabama

November 23, 1905

Appeal from Circuit Court, Pike County; H. A. Pearce, Judge.

"To be officially reported."

Action by attachment by the Troy Grocery Company against the Merchants' Laclede National Bank of St. Louis, Mo brought before final judgment. From a judgment refusing to dissolve the attachment, defendant appeals. Reversed.

L. D Gardner and A. C. Worthy, for appellant.

Foster Samford & Carrol, for appellee.

HARALSON J.

Section 5242, Rev. St. U.S. [ U.S. Comp. St. 1901, p. 3517], among other things provides: "No attachment, injunction or execution, shall be issued against such association (national banks) or its property before final judgment in any suit action or proceeding, in any state, county or municipal court."

Whatever opinion a state court might entertain as to a correct construction of this provision of the statute of the United States, is immaterial, since these courts are bound by the construction placed upon the act by the Supreme Court of the United States. That court, in the case of Pacific N. Bank v. Mixter, 124 U.S. 721, 8 S.Ct. 718, 31 L.Ed. 567, has plainly and pointedly construed the act to be "a prohibition upon all attachments against national banks under the authority of the state courts."

Chief Justice Waite, delivering the OPINION says: "It stands now, as it did originally, as the permanent law of the land, that attachments shall not issue from state courts against national banks, and writes into all state attachment laws an exception in favor of national banks. Since the act of 1873 all the attachment laws of the state must be read as if they contain a provision in express terms that they were not to apply to suits against a national bank. * * * In our opinion the effect of the act of Congress is to deny the state remedy altogether so far as suits against national banks are concerned, and in this way it operates as well on the courts of the United States as on those of the states. Although the provision was evidently made to secure equality among the general creditors in the division of the proceeds of the property of an insolvent bank, its operation is by no means confined to cases of actual or contemplated insolvency. The remedy is taken away altogether and cannot be used under any circumstances."

So it is held, that the state courts...