Groff v. City Savings Fund & Trust Co.
Groff v. City Savings Fund & Trust Co.
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
This is an appeal from the decree of the court below distributing the funds in the hands of J. H. Rathfon, receiver of the City Saving Fund & Trust Company of Lancaster, an insolvent corporation. The appeal is by Charles T. Waldo, executor of the will of Sarah W. Haines, deceased, who asserts that the claim which he represents is entitled to preference in payment, as against the demands of the general creditors of the insolvent corporation. Waldo, as executor, had been required to give bond, the trust company had become his surety, and there had been delivered and transferred to said company, by or on behalf of the executor, to indemnify it against loss on account of said suretyship, a certificate of deposit for $1,237.17, issued by the Rising Sun National Bank of Rising Sun, Maryland. This certificate had been issued to Sarah W. Haines in her lifetime, was dated October 13, 1903, and payable twelve months after the date thereof, with interest at the rate of three per cent per annum. The trust company collected the amount of the certificate, with the interest, when it became payable, in October, 1904. The trust company failed, in the latter part of January, 1905, and Rathfon was duly appointed receiver to wind up its affairs. The receiver having filed an account this appellant asserted the right to have the claim which he represented paid in full out of the fund for distribution, which claim the court below disallowed and awarded to the appellant the same percentage upon his claim which was paid to other creditors; from that decree we have this appeal.
The specifications of error are many, but those which have even a remote connection with the question which controls this case are few. Let it be conceded that the claim of the appellant grew out of a trust relation, and, further, that the insolvent trustee had been guilty of
The decree of the court below is affirmed and the appeal ‘ dismissed at cost of the appellant.
Reference
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- Groff v. City Savings Fund & Trust Company
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- Syllabus
- Insolvency — Preferences—Trust funds. 1. A person claiming to be a trust creditor must, in order to establish his right to a preference, trace the trust money into some specific property, fund, security, or account of the insolvent, which has passed into the hands of the receiver or assignee, and the proceeds of which are to be distributed. He must identify the fund out of which he demands to be preferred in distribution either as the original trust property or as the product of it. 2. Where a trust company deposits in a national bank for collection a certificate of deposit which it held as counter indemnity for liability on an executor’s bond, and the bank passes the proceeds of the certificate to the trust company’s account, and thereafter the trust company reduces the account below the amount represented by the certificate, and finally on the insolvency of the trust company, the bank applies the whole balance as a set-off to its own claim against the trust company, the executor cannot claim a preference over general creditors in the distribution of the assets of the insolvent trust company.