California Pacific Title & Trust Co. v. Crocker First National Bank

SPENCE, Acting P. J.

Plaintiff brought this action to recover the sum of $12,559.25, alleged to have been the balance due to plaintiff as a depositor in the defendant bank. The cause was tried by the court sitting without a jury and from a judgment in favor of plaintiff defendant appeals.

The defendant bank came into being as the result of a consolidation and the name of the plaintiff corporation was changed during the time referred to herein but neither the consolidation nor the change of name is material here, so we may simply refer to the institutions involved as plaintiff and defendant. In 1922, plaintiff issued a check on the defendant bank in said sum of $12,559.25 payable to “Mary Baldwin Wood, Extrx., and Baldwin Wood, Extr., of the estate of William Sidney Wood, dec’d.” It is this check which is the center of controversy. Said check was indorsed by Baldwin Wood by signing the names of both payees in the same manner as said names appeared upon the check and he thereafter deposited the same in an account carried in the American National Bank in the name of “Estate William S. Wood, Deceased.” This estate account was a very active account, the funds in which were subject to withdrawal upon the signature of Baldwin Wood alone. The record does not disclose what, if anything, was done with the money received by Baldwin Wood in payment of this particular check after said money was placed in the last-.mentioned account. Mary Baldwin Wood testified “The check was not paid to me,” but it also appears from her testimony that Baldwin Wood regularly deposited large sums in her personal account from 1908 until his death, which occurred some time subsequent to 1925. She did not know the exact source of the funds so deposited, but testified, “I got enough to spend seven or eight hundred dollars a month from 1908 until his death.”

It was the theory of plaintiff that the indorsement of said check in the manner described constituted forgery on the part of said Baldwin Wood and that plaintiff was en

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titled to judgment against the bank for the full amount represented by said check. This action was not commenced until 1928, being six years after the payment of said check by the defendant bank. The bank defended upon the ground that all money on deposit had been paid out upon plaintiff’s order, and the defendant bank further pleaded the statute of limitations. In other words, the bank took the position that the indorsement was not forged but was an authorized indorsement, and further took the position that even if the indorsement was forged, plaintiff’s claim was barred. The trial court found against the bank on both of these defenses and gave judgment in favor of plaintiff for the full amount of the check.