People v. California Safe Deposit & Trust Co.

The action to recover the sum of $847.50, alleged to be held by defendant, said trust company, as a special deposit and as the property of petitioner, Emma J. White.

At the close of petitioner’s evidence, the motion for a non-suit, made by said receiver, was granted. The appeal is from the judgment of nonsuit and from the order denying motion for a new trial.

The facts in the ease appear from the testimony of Frank W. Aitken, as follows:

He testified further: “I did not get back the check from Mr. Chevassus, the paying teller. When I gave it to him he kept it and informed Mr. Dawson of it. I walked down the aisle to another part of the bank where Mr. Dawson was; I told him I had given the check to Mr. Chevassus. The check was returned to us afterward. It was perforated with the word ‘Paid’ and the figures ‘10-30-07.’ We afterward received a statement from the California Safe Deposit and Trust Company showing that the $1,000.00 had been received from the bank in Oakland on or about October 14, 1907, and that the check referred to, for $847.50, had been withdrawn and deducted from the account on October 30, 1907.”

It was admitted by the receiver “that the check was duly charged…

I dissent from the order denying a rehearing, not because I am convinced that the judgment of the district court of appeal is erroneous, but because the question involved is a new one in this state, upon which the authorities in other jurisdictions are not in harmony; and more particularly because the case is not, as stated in the opinion of the appellate court ‘ simply that of a depositor desiring to have a portion of her deposit remitted to her at a distant place.” The transaction was in fact of a radically different character. The certificate of deposit was not an ordinary certificate of deposit importing the ordinary relation between the bank and the holder of the certificate. Mrs. White did not make the deposit either by herself or an agent. Aitken & Aitken had been her agents for the settlement of certain claims against her, but the money furnished them for that purpose had been deposited to their credit and they had become her debtors for the balance remaining after deducting the amount of the claims paid and the value of their services. When an agent is accounting to his principal and paying over the balance due his principal he is not acting in the character of agent, but…