Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 10.djvu/271

RECENT CASES. 245 Confl. Laws, 6th ed., § 379. It has not been allowed to preven-t the taxation of tangible property physically within the jurisdiction. Hoyt v. Commissioners of Taxes ^ 23 N. Y. 224, 228. The trouble is, as Vann, J. says (p. 711), that intangible property has ever been perplexing "because it has no physical presence. ... It may exist, as it were, in the air. . . . Such rights are ordinarily regarded as attached to the person of the owner, but they are not inseparable from him, because creditors are per- mitted to seize them. . . . There is nothing, therefore, in the nature of the most intangible right ... to prevent the legislature from giving it a situs apart from the residence of its owner," provided it has " some practical existence in the State that assumes jurisdiction." This seems the sound view. The analogy of jurisdiction in garnishment proceed- ings appears to be perfect. The answer (see the Houdayer case, 38 N. Y. Supp, 323, 325), that jurisdiction over the debtor is not jurisdiction over the debt, because the tax law creates the obligation which is enforced, while in attachment of a debt only an existing obligation is enforced, is not satisfactory, whether or not garnishment is viewed as a proceeding in rem. On principle, there appears to be no real distinction between the power to tax the bonds in the Bronson case and the power to tax interest which a domestic corporation pays to its foreign bondholders. The Supreme Court was divided five to four in holding that Pennsyl- vania could not impose such a tax as impairing the obligation of con- tracts. State Tax on Foreign-held Bonds ^ 15 Wall. 300. Mr. Justice Vann's distinction between a tax on the right of succession and a tax on property does not seem to meet the question squarely, where the power to tax the right of succession depends upon jurisdiction over the thing inherited. The Whiting case, supra, rests upon a different principle. In the Foreign-held Bond case (p. 324) it was said that state and municipal bonds, by usage, and a bank's circulating notes, because treated as money, are so far tangible property that they may be taxed where found. See Dos Passos, Inh. Tax, 2d ed., 65. With this principle once estab- lished, that the documentary evidence of intangible property may be treated as tangible property, it becomes a question of fact whether usage has gone far enough to justify its application. There may easily be a difference of opinion in a given case, and yet one would hardly say a decision either way was wrong. When this characteristic has become attached to any kind of intangible property, it is a question whether it can consistently be held that the character of intangible property remains so that the property can be reached through the debtor. RECENT CASES. BiT.Ls AND Notes — Certification of Note by Bank — Payment. — Defend- ant, holder of a note payable at the plaintiff bank, caused it to be presented for certifi- cation. A few days after certifying the note, plaintiff discovered that it did not possess funds of the maker sufficient to pay it, and requested that the note be withheld from the clearing house. The note was not withheld, however, and the clearing-house bank of the plaintiff was obliged by the rules of the dealing house to pay it, as an item against a bank for which it cleared. Held, that plaintiff could not recover the amount