Winkler v. Veigel
| Decision Date | 08 February 1929 |
| Docket Number | 27,072 |
| Citation | 223 N.W. 622,176 Minn. 384 |
| Parties | JOSEPH J. WINKLER AND ANOTHER v. A. J. VEIGEL, LIQUIDATING FARMERS STATE BANK OF HOLDINGFORD |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
Action in the district court for Stearns county to have defendant as commissioner of banks, allow as a preferred claim an amount paid to the Farmers State Bank of Holdingford before its liquidation to be remitted by the bank to the county treasurer in payment of certain taxes due from plaintiffs. From an order, Roeser, J. overruling a demurrer to the complaint, defendant appealed, the questions presented having been certified as important and doubtful. Affirmed.
Transaction described is equivalent to the making of a special deposit.
1. Where a person having a deposit account in a bank gives his check to the bank for a certain sum requesting such sum to be remitted to another person, and the bank accepts the check charges the depositor's account therewith, and agrees to remit the money to the person designated, the transaction is equivalent to payment in cash to the bank for the special purpose agreed on.
By it the bank's assets were augmented.
2. The bank's assets were thereby augmented, since it never remitted the money.
Complaint alleged defendant received funds in excess of the special deposit.
3. Under the allegations of the complaint defendant received funds in excess of the special deposit so made when he took over the bank's assets.
D. F. Nordstrom, for appellant.
Frederick J. Miller, for respondents.
Henry Spindler, amicus curiae, filed a brief in support of the contention of respondents.
In overruling a demurrer to the complaint the court certified the questions presented important and doubtful. Defendant appeals. The substantial facts stated in the complaint are these:
The Farmers State Bank of Holdingford is in the hands of defendant for liquidation. While it was a going concern plaintiffs paid to the bank as their agent $253.23 to be remitted to the county treasurer at St. Cloud for payment of taxes for 1926 upon certain real estate owned by them in Stearns county and received from the cashier of the bank a receipt so stating. The sum so receipted for was paid to the bank in this manner: Plaintiffs had a checking account in the bank and gave the cashier their check in the amount stated, and the bank at once reduced said account in the amount of the check. Three or four days thereafter, on May 31, 1927, the bank sent a draft to the county treasurer of Stearns county, together with a list of the names and descriptions upon which payment of taxes were to be made. This draft included the amount of plaintiffs' taxes and of others who had intrusted the bank with funds to be remitted in payment of the taxes on their lands. This draft reached the county treasurer; but before he could present it to the bank upon which it was drawn, defendant closed the doors of the Farmers State Bank of Holdingford and the draft was not paid, nor did the treasurer issue any receipt for the taxes. When defendant took over the bank he received funds more than enough to cover the draft. Plaintiffs presented their claim to defendant demanding that it be allowed as a preferred claim. This defendant refused to do but allowed it as a general claim. Plaintiffs in the complaint prayed that the court adjudge their claim a preferred claim. Two other taxpayers who had paid to the bank at the same time moneys to be remitted in payment of their taxes assigned their claims for preference to plaintiffs. These are stated in two separate causes of action in substantially the same words as above, except that one of the amounts was paid in cash, and the other was paid by a check upon another bank in Holdingford, which check was presented and the money paid thereon to the Farmers State Bank of Holdingford.
Nothing need be said of the second and third causes of action, for if the complaint states facts showing plaintiffs entitled to a preference upon the first cause of action, it certainly does as to the other two.
The initial question presented is whether the giving of the check by plaintiffs upon their deposit account in the bank, and the bank's charging the amount of the check against the account, amounts to the same thing as a payment of that much cash to the bank for the special purpose of remitting the same to the county treasurer. We think it does. A well reasoned decision so holding and also affirming the next proposition, that a reduction of the deposit account of the maker of the check by the transaction augments the assets of the bank, is Northwest Lbr. Co. v. Scandinavian Am. Bank, 130 Wash. 33, 225 P. 825, 39 A.L.R. 922. To the same effect may be cited Darragh Co. v. Goodman, 124 Ark. 532, 187 N.W. 673; Messenger v. Carroll Tr. & Sav. Bank, 193 Iowa 608, 187 N.W. 545; Goodyear T. & R. Co. v. Hanover State Bank, 109 Kan. 772, 204 P. 992, 21 A.L.R. 677; Brogan v. Kriepe, 116 Kan. 506, 227 P. 261, 37 A.L.R. 126; Stoller v. Coates, 88 Mo. 514; Hawaiian Pineapple Co. v. Browne, 69 Mont. 140, 220 P. 1114; People v. City Bank of Rochester, 96 N.Y. 32; State ex rel. v. Excello F.M. Co. 131 Okl. 100, 267 P. 833; Federal Res. Bank v. Peters, 139 Va. 45, 123 S.E. 379, 42 A.L.R. 742.
Holding as we do, that the acceptance of plaintiffs' check and charging the amount thereof against their deposit account was equivalent to a receipt of that much money, our own decisions determine that the agreement of the bank to remit that amount to the county treasurer in payment of the...
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