Lebanon Trust & Safe Deposit Bank's Assigned Estate

Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Lebanon Trust & Safe Deposit Bank's Assigned Estate, 166 Pa. 622 (Pa. 1895)
31 A. 334; 1895 Pa. LEXIS 1261
Dean, Fell, Green, McCollum, Williams

Lebanon Trust & Safe Deposit Bank's Assigned Estate

Opinion of the Court

Per Curiam,

The auditor found, and upon sufficient testimony, that when the money which composed the fund for which preference was claimed in this case, was deposited in the bank, it was simply placed in the general funds of the bank. No investment of it *625was made in any securities of the bank, nor was it in any way separated or individuated from the general funds. It was not earmarked in any way, and it is not even alleged that the original money deposited can possibly be traced or discovered. In such circumstances the obligation of the bank became simply a debt of the bank, and. entitled only to the same recognition in the distribution as other unsecured debts. The case is clearly ruled by Thompson’s Appeal, 22 Pa. 16; Bank v. King, 57 Pa. 202, and Peoples Bank’s Appeal, 93 Pa. 107. The fund had become incapable of identification and therefore there was nothing which could be specifically appropriated to the payment or liquidation of the appellant’s claim.

Judgment affirmed.

Reference

Full Case Name
Lebanon Trust & Safe Deposit Bank's Assigned Estate. C. W. Carmany's Appeal
Cited By
29 cases
Status
Published
Syllabus
Trusts and trustees—Banks and banking—Mingling of trust funds with general deposits. Where money received by a bank as trustee is not kept distinct nor invested in any specific way, but is mingled with the general mass of money on deposit and used in the general banking business, and there is no means of tracing or ascertaining its identity in any form or species of property, the cestui que trust is not entitled to a preference over general creditors in a distribution of the assigned estate of the bank.