State v. Tyler County State Bank

• Decision Date: 31 March 1926
• Docket Number: (Motion No. 6930.),(No. 545-4285.)
• Citation: 282 S.W. 211
• Parties: STATE v. TYLER COUNTY STATE BANK et al.
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

282 S.W. 211

STATE v. TYLER COUNTY STATE BANK et al.

(No. 545-4285.)

(Motion No. 6930.)

Commission of Appeals of Texas, Section B.

March 31, 1926.

Error to Court of Civil Appeals of Ninth Supreme Judicial District.

On rehearing. Former opinion affirmed.

For former opinion, see 277 S. W. 625.

SHORT, J.

While the consideration of the motion for a rehearing has served only to intensify our conviction that the original opinion correctly decided the material matters involved in this case, yet, in deference to the earnestness of counsel representing defendants in error, we have concluded to write further on the subject.

The argument of counsel representing defendants in error in support of the motion for rehearing is based upon two major propositions one being that a county depository is a distinct entity created by statute entirely separate and independent of the bank which happens to have been selected as county depository, and the other being that the state became a depositor of the bank by virtue of the issuance of the cashier's checks by reason of which the depository was relieved of any further liability, as such, to the extent of the amount of money claimed to be represented by such checks. The basis of the state's claim in this suit is not the cashier's checks, but the fact that the duly authorized agent of the state in the person of the tax collector of Tyler placed money belonging to the state in the county depository for safekeeping until this money or its equivalent had been lawfully paid to its agent, the state treasurer, coupled with the fact that this money or its equivalent had never been lawfully paid to any agent of the state authorized to receive it. In Kidder v. Hall, 251 S. W. 497, 113 Tex. 49, Chief Justice Cureton of the Supreme Court, in discussing the law applicable to the guaranty fund, says a depositor entitled to protection of the bank depositors' guaranty fund "is one who delivers to or leaves with a bank money, or checks or drafts, the commercial equivalent of money, subject to his order, and by virtue of which action the title to the money passes to the bank," in which it would be noted that the thing deposited is money or its equivalent. In the same case it is stated that one who did not occupy the relation of depositor by purchase from a bank a cashier`s check does not thereby become a depositor. Now, if the state did not become a depositor of the Tyler County State Bank by virtue of the transaction involved in this case, and no actual money having been delivered to the state's agent, the tax collector, it logically follows that the money lawfully deposited in the Tyler County State Bank as a depository by the tax collector retained its status acquired at the time of its having been deposited. This status was one created by the law regulating county depositories, whereby a county depository lawfully receiving money from an agent of the state becomes obligated to the state to account for said money until the amount thereof has been lawfully withdrawn.

The transaction involved in this suit, reduced to its simplest terms, is, that certain taxpayers paid to the agent of the state certain sums of money whereby the title to the money became vested in the state. In obedience to his duties, this agent of the state deposited with the Tyler County State Bank, which had been designated as the county depository, this aggregate sum of money pending its delivery to the owner. In pursuance of his duties, the agent of the state, in the person of the tax collector, demanded of the county depository this money. None was delivered to him. But, in response to this demand, the bank which was the county depository delivered to him a couple of cashier's checks payable to the treasurer of the state, and these checks were forwarded by the tax collector to the state treasurer. In the meantime, the money actually remained, physically speaking, where the tax collector had placed it in the Tyler County State Bank, acting as the county depository of Tyler county. So far as the state is concerned, that money is still there, though demand has been duly made for its delivery. It is true that the tax collector says that he accepted these cashier's checks in payment of the demand upon the county depository, but equity looks to the substance and not the shadow, to the spirit and not the letter, in a case made appropriate by the facts, and to prevent a wrong and an injustice to prevail will treat a bank as such and the same bank as a duly selected and acting county depository as identical one with the other. It seeks justice rather than technicality, truth rather than evasion, common sense rather than quibbling. State National Bank v. Encinal Mercantile Co. (Tex. Civ. App.) 277 S. W. 399.

In the case of Eastland County v. Chapman, 276 S. W. 658, in speaking about a similar transaction, Judge Speer, of the Commission of Appeals, Section B, uses this language:

"It may be conceded that one whose deposit is carried by a state bank upon security or at interest may by mere agreement with the bank change the nature of the deposit by transferring it to the unsecured noninterest-bearing class, without the actual repayment to the depositor and redeposit with the bank by him, provided the bank be solvent at the time and able to make such actual payment, and the depositor therefore able to make such actual deposit. This is upon the conception that the law upon...