Sinclair Ref. Co v. First Nat. Bank Of Moultrie

• Decision Date: 24 September 1932
• Docket Number: No. 21968.,21968.
• Citation: 45 Ga.App. 769,165 S.E. 860
• Parties: SINCLAIR REFINING CO. v. FIRST NAT. BANK OF MOULTRIE.
• Court: Georgia Court of Appeals

45 Ga.App. 769

165 S.E. 860

SINCLAIR REFINING CO.

v.FIRST NAT. BANK OF MOULTRIE.

No. 21968.

Court of Appeals of Georgia,

Division No. 2.

Sept. 24, 1932.

Syllabus by Editorial Staff.

Error from Superior Court, Colquitt County; W. E. Thomas, Judge.

Action by the Sinclair Refining Company against the First National Bank of Moultrie. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff brings error.

Affirmed.

L. L. Moore, of Moultrie, for plaintiff in error.

Waldo DeLoache and John T. Coyle, both of Moultrie, for defendant in error.

Syllabus Opinion by the Court.

JENKINS, P. J.

This was a suit against a bank for the amounts of several cheeks drawn to the plaintiffs order, some of which were drawn on the defendant bank, and some on other banks, which the defendant bank had cashed upon the indorsement of the plaintiff's name by one acting as agent. The proceeds of these checks had been converted by the agent to his own use, and it is alleged that the agent was not authorized to indorse the plaintiff's name to checks. The case was submitted to the trial judge, without the intervention of a jury, upon an agreed statement of facts. The judge found in favor of the defendant bank, and the plaintiff excepted. Held:

1. "The authority of an agent in a particular instance need not be proved by express contract; it may be established by the principal's conduct and course of dealing, and if one holds out another as his agent, and by his course of dealing indicates that the agent has certain authority, and thus induces another to deal with his agent as such, he is estopped to deny that the agent has any authority which, as reasonably deducible from the conduct of the parties, the agent apparently has." Germain Co. v. Bank of Camden County, 14 Ga. App. 88, 80 S. E. 302; Armour Fertilizer Works v. Abel, 15 Ga. App. 275, 280, 82 S. E. 907; Bacon v. Dannenberg Co., 24 Ga. App. 540 (4), 101 S. E. 699; Patterson v. Southern Ry. Co., 41 Ga. App. 94, 151 S. E. 818.

2. In the instant case it appears from the agreed statement of facts that the plaintiff oil company had, by a written instrument, employed the agent to sell its products within a certain territory on a commission basis, and that the agent had been engaged in such business for more than a year; that the agent was expressly authorized to receive in settlement for products sold "payment in the forms of checks or cash money, " and that the proceeds of such sales were to be deposited daily by the agent in a bank to be designated by the plaintiff; that the agent contracted to furnish a surety bond, acceptable to the plaintiff, to fully protect and indemnify it against loss of any moneys or property coming into the hands of the agent. The only limitation upon the authority of the agent to indorse the plaintiff's name to checks received in payment for products sold was contained in secret instructions, unknown to the defendant, that such checks should be indorsed only for deposit in a certain bank different from the defendant bank. In the agreed statements of facts it was stipulated that all the checks and drafts in question were given to the agent by purchasers of the products of the plaintiff "in the general course of their dealings with him as selling agent" of the plaintiff, and in payment for products of the...