Boatmen's Savings Bank v. State Savings Association of St. Louis/Opinion of the Court

by Morrison Waite

United States Supreme Court

114 U.S. 265

Boatmen's Savings Bank  v.  State Savings Association of St. Louis

We are unable to discover any federal question in the record. No title, right, privilege, or immunity, under the constitution or laws of the United States, was set up in the pleadings, and no claim of that kind was made at the trial. The whole controversy, at and before the trial, seems to have been as to the right of the holder of a banker's check to recover against a bank having funds of the drawer when presentation has been duly made and payment demanded, and as to the effect of the arrangement between the parties when it was agreed that the bank should pay the checks if the Bradley draft was collected.

In the court of appeals it was, among other things, assigned for error that 'the judgment was against the right of the defendant to a judgment in his favor under the provisions of the act of congress of the United States, establishing and providing for a uniform system of bankruptcy, in force at the time of the transaction between the parties, out of which the controversy arises,' and, from the opinion of the court, section 5073 of the Revised Statutes seems to have been relied on. That section provides: 'In all cases of mutual debts or mutual credits between the parties, the account between them shall be stated, and one debt set off against the other, and the balance only shall be allowed or paid.' No rights under this section were set up in the pleadings or claimed at the trial; and, besides, the right of the bank to apply whatever credit there may be in its accounts in favor of the bankrupt firm to the reduction of the amount due on the draft is not denied. The only dispute is as to the amount of the credit, and we are unable to see that the bankrupt law is involved in the determination of that question. The court of appeals decided that the presentation of the checks on the fifth of November operated as an equitable assignment at that date of an amount of the fund then standing to the credit of the firm equal to the amount of the checks, and made the savings association from that time, in equity, the creditor of the bank to that extent. Debts are provable against a bankrupt's estate as of the date of the commencement of the proceedings in bankruptcy. Rev. St. § 5067. As section 5073 relates to the amount which may be allowed upon such proof, it is clear that the mutual debts or mutual credits there referred to must be such as are in existence at the same date. In the present case, the question was whether, on the fifth of November, 1874, more than two months before the commencement of the proceedings in bankruptcy, a part of the balance standing to the credit of Cobb, Dolhonde & Co. on the books of the bank had been assigned to the plaintiff in this action. That did not depend on the bankrupt law, but on the legal effect of what was done at and before that time by the parties, and when, so far as appears from the record, no proceedings in bankruptcy were contemplated. The point for determination was whether the presentation of a check drawn on a banker by a customer having funds to his credit, transferred in equity to the holder of the check so much of the debt due from the bank to the drawer as was sufficient to pay the check. This clearly is not a federal question.

It follows that we have no jurisdiction of the case, and it is dismissed.

Notes