State ex rel. Sorensen v. Farmers & Merchants Bank
State ex rel. Sorensen v. Farmers & Merchants Bank
Opinion of the Court
From a decree canceling the note of the intervener, and requiring the receiver of the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Weston to deliver the note to the intervener, the receiver appeals.
Charles H. Slama, intervener and appellee, a resident of Wahoo, Nebraska, alleges in his petition of intervention, filed August 3, 1931, that F. J. Kirchman was president of the Saunders County National Bank at Wahoo, and also president of the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Weston, Nebraska, and was a stockholder and director in both of said banks; that on Sunday, January 19, 1930, said Kirchman telephoned for the intervener to come night down to the Saunders County National Bank, and when he arrived Kirchman requested a favor of him. Kirchman told him that the Saunders County National Bank had a second mortgage of $10,000 on a half-section of land owned by Wilhelmina Hruby, which had been past due since November 1, 1929, and that the bank had been ordered by the examiner to either foreclose said mortgage or charge it off; that the surplus and undivided profits were not sufficient to charge the mortgage off from its books, and that the bank disliked to foreclose the mortgage against the maker thereof, who had been an old friend and good customer. Thereupon, Kirchman begged
The intervener states that in April, 1930, seven banks in Wahoo and vicinity closed, and that he was beset with an enormous amount of labor, with investigations of numerous clients who were depositors and investors in said banks, and also by demands made upon him personally by reason of his being surety on several bonds for F. J. Kirchman, and that he suffered ill health thereafter, which accounts for his delay in filing the petition of intervention. That after the failure of the banks, the intervener found that the said Kirchman had made one of the notes payable to the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Weston in the sum of $3,000.
The intervener alleges that, promptly upon discovering the fraud, he informed the receiver of the bank of Weston of all the facts herein, and that he had received no consideration for' said $3,000 note, and that said note was procured by fraud, deceit, and misrepresentation of the president of said bank, and the intervener asked that the note be canceled and delivered up by the receiver of said bank.
The receiver, for answer to the petition of intervention, admits that Kirchman was the president of both banks, and charges that, since acquiring knowledge of the alleged fraud practiced upon him by Kirchman, the intervener had made payments upon both principal and interest of the other three notes, which, with the note held by the receiver of the Farmers & Merchants Bank of Weston, all constituted one and the same transaction, and that by his conduct the intervener has ratified and affirmed the transaction with Kirchman, which was, in effect, an absolute purchase by Slama of the Hruby $10,000 mortgage. That if Kirchman, as president of the Nebraska State Savings
For reply the intervener alleged that, without his consent, Kirchman wrongfully transferred three of said notes to innocent purchasers for value, one for $3,000 to the State Bank of Swedeburg, of which • Mr. Kirchman was only a director, and that he transferred the $1,000 note and a $3,000 note to the Federal Reserve Bank; that the intervener, after convincing himself that he had no defenses as against the holders of these three notes, paid off the $3,000 note to the State Bank of Swedeburg in full, and paid to the Federal Reserve Bank the $1,000 note in full, and $1,200 on the $3,000 note held by said Federal Reserve Bank.
At the trial the intervener testified that he had been attorney for the Saunders County National Bank for more than eight years. He then related at length how Mr. Kirchman had called him to the bank on that Sunday morning, January 19, 1930, and urged him to do the bank a favor by taking an assignment of the Mrs. Hruby $10,~ 000 mortgage because it was not good advertising for the bank to foreclose it, and because her family had been very friendly with Kirchman; that Kirchman definitely promised to keep the four notes, which he then signed, for $10,000 there in the bank, and just as soon as the decree of foreclosure was secured and assigned to the bank his four notes would be returned to him, and in addition agreed to pay him the same attorney fee as though the foreclosure had been brought in the name of the bank; that when the intervener asked Kirchman for the note and mortgage he said it was locked up in the vault, and that he would send it up to him the next day,
1. While this case is not free from doubt, and while the tragedy which resulted from the failure of an entire line of banks, under practically the same management, has brought untold loss to the depositors and many customers, who purchased questionable securities, represented to be good, yet each case which reaches this court must be determined upon the facts definitely proved in that particular case.
After a careful study of the evidence, including the exhibits in the case at bar, we are convinced that the intervener did not enter into a fraudulent deal with F. J. Kirchman. The intervener already owed the bank a large sum of money; he did not go to the bank that Sunday morning to buy a $10,000 mortgage; he went there as the attorney who had for many years been counsel for the bank. He was told that the examiner required that a past-due mortgage of $10,000 must be charged off or foreclosed. The bank’s condition was such that it could not be charged off, hence it must be foreclosed.. But it was against a friend of Kirchman, who was a valued customer of the bank, and she was also a widow. Kirchman wished to keep the bank’s name out of the foreclosure suit, saying it would be poor advertising for the bank, and the intervener was persuaded to put in $10,000 worth of his personal notes, take an assignment of the mortgage, and immediately bring foreclosure, upon Kirchman’s specific promise to return him his notes in exchange for the assignment of the decree of foreclosure. To make it still more clear that Slama is not more than a holder of the
Viewed in this light, there was nothing crooked or fraudulent in the transaction, and Kirchman could have immediately reported to the examiner that he had followed his direction, and turned the mortgage over to the bank’s attorney for action, and, to avoid a foreclosure in the bank’s name, arranged to have the foreclosure brought in the name of the attorney.
The attorney for the intervener also stresses the point that the receiver has failed to prove that any depositor will suffer if the receiver is defeated in this action.
It was held in First State Bank v. Hare, 152 S. W. (Tex. Civ. App.) 501, that a bank which accepts a note obtained in negotiations conducted by its president cannot deny that he represented the bank in the transaction. To the same effect is an Iowa case. A cashier was required to hold stock in his bank, and a certificate was made out to Cashier Hambright, and paid for by his note, with the agreement that it would be carried by the bank without interest as long as he remained its cashier. He had also renewed this note. When he ceased to be cashier, the bank brought suit on the note. The defendant proved that the agreement included the condition that when he ceased to be cashier the certificate of stock would be returned to the bank, and his note returned to him. The bank alleged that Davis, its president, had no authority to make any such an agreement. The trial court held that, at most, it was a private deal between the president and cashier, and that this would not affect the note. Upon appeal, the appellate court reversed this decision, and held that the bank was not an indorsee holding title, but was
2. Section 94, Restatement, Agency, says: “An affirmance of an unauthorized transaction may be inferred from a failure to repudiate it.” And in the same authority, at section 104, the law is declared to be: “Although there is no ratification, a person on whose account another acts or purports to act may become a party to a transaction similar to the original transaction by manifesting consent, or he may become subject to liability for the value of the benefits received as a result of the original transaction.” Division No. 1, Railway Employees’ Department, A. F. L., v. American State Bank, 113 Neb. 196; Security State Bank v. Schomberg, 119 Neb. 598; Brownell v. Ruwe, 117 Neb. 407.
The receiver insists that a corporation is not chargeable with the knowledge, nor bound by the acts, of one of its officers in a matter in which he acts in behalf of his own interests, and deals with the corporation as a private individual, and in no way represents it in the transaction, citing Koehler v. Dodge, 31 Neb. 328; Buffalo County Nat. Bank v. Sharpe, 40 Neb. 123.
But a careful consideration of all the evidence leaves little doubt that Kirchman, in taking this $3,000 note directly to the Weston bank, was acting for that bank. The cashier of that bank, Ferdinand Pacal, testified that, when he received the note in suit by mail, he gave credit on his books to the Saunders County National Bank, which had charged the note to his bank on its books, and that, in a talk with Mr. Kirchman prior to the failure of the two banks Mr. Kirchman told him that this note of the intervener would be taken up as soon as the foreclosure of the Hruby mortgage took place.
“It would seem to be rather clear that a president of a bank accepting a security knowing that it was defective and not an enforceable obligation would bind his bank by his knowledge of the fact. The cases cited by the receiver on this point concede that where the officer is acting for the bank his knowledge is imputed to the bank.
“Another contention of the receiver is that the president of the National Bank, as such, had no authority to make an agreement with Slama that he would not be required to pay the notes. This may be conceded as a general rule that where the bank parts with value for a note the president has no authority to release the note except upon payment. But the transaction with intervener was clearly within the implied authority of the president and the manager of the bank, in an arrangement whereby intervener was employed to assist the bank in collecting the asset represented by the Hruby mortgage, and the method employed contravenes no principle of law or ethics.”
We are indebted to the receiver for furnishing us the full opinion of Judge Redick in his brief.
We are able to reach no other conclusion than that it would be unjust to allow the Weston bank to take advantage of that part of the transaction only by which it secured this note, and relieve it from the remainder of the same agreement. Finding no error in the judgment of the trial court, the same is hereby
Affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.