Staples v. City Bank & Trust Co.

• Decision Date: 11 November 1915
• Docket Number: 1 Div. 837
• Citation: 70 So. 115,194 Ala. 687
• Parties: STAPLES v. CITY BANK & TRUST CO.
• Court: Alabama Supreme Court

70 So. 115

194 Ala. 687

STAPLES v. CITY BANK & TRUST CO.

1 Div. 837

Supreme Court of Alabama

November 11, 1915

Appeal from Circuit Court, Mobile County; Samuel B. Browne, Judge.

Assumpsit by the City Bank & Trust Company against Dora D. Staples. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals. Reversed and remanded.

McMillan & Grayson, of Mobile, for appellant.

Gregory L. & H.T. Smith, of Mobile, for appellee.

SOMERVILLE J.

This case is ruled by the principles declared by this court in the recent case of Lamkin v. Lowell, 176 Ala. 334, 339 58 So. 258. In that case it was settled, upon a very full consideration of the subject, that when a wife borrows money from her husband's creditor, and hands it back to him in payment of her husband's debt, although she becomes nominally the principal debtor upon a new obligation, she is nevertheless, within the true meaning of the statute (Code, § 4497), a surety for her husband's debt, and not bound by her obligation to pay it.

A fundamental distinction is made between a loan secured from the husband's creditor and one secured from a third person who is not interested in the disposition of the fund and who makes the loan to the wife as an independent business transaction, to do with as she pleases. If the debt sought to be enforced against the wife, or any part of it, was infected with this vice in its inception, the infection remains regardless of renewals or changes of form. And so, with respect to the method by which the proceeds of the loan are returned to the hands of the lender, it is of no consequence whether the payment of the husband's debt is open and direct, or whether the money passes to the creditor through intermediates chosen for the purpose.

The law looks to the intention and the result, and not to the means employed. In the present case, therefore, the mere fact that the proceeds of a nominally independent loan made by plaintiff to defendant were first deposited to the account of defendant in the plaintiff bank, and by her checked out to the husband debtor, is of no significance if, pursuant to previous understanding between plaintiff and husband, the fund was ultimately appropriated to the payment of the husband's then existing debt. The prime questions were the contemporaneous debtorship of defendant's husband (which is not disputed) and the accomplished intention of paying his debt with the obligation of defendant, his wife (which was the disputed issue). On this issue, which...