Bartholow v. Bean/Opinion of the Court

by Samuel Freeman Miller

United States Supreme Court

85 U.S. 635

Bartholow  v.  Bean

The plaintiffs in error were bankers in the city of St. Louis, with whom Kintzing & Co. kept a bank account, and they had discounted the note of Kintzing & Co. for $2500, dated July 15th, 1869, payable in sixty days, indorsed by J. B. Wilcox. Before its maturity Wilcox, who was solvent, waived protest and notice, and the note remained unpaid until August 9th, when Kintzing paid the amount to plaintiffs in error. In the meantime Kintzing & Co. failed in business, and in February attempted a composition with their creditors at seventy cents on the dollar, in notes payable in six, twelve, and eighteen months. The plaintiffs in error did not sign this agreement, though they knew of it, and that effort seems to have failed. It must be conceded that Kintzing was utterly insolvent when he paid the note, and this must have been known to plaintiffs in error. A petition in bankruptcy was filed against Kintzing within less than four months after the payment of the note, and Bean, the defendant in error, having been appointed assignee, brought the present suit to recover the money so paid, as being a preference of a creditor forbidden by the Bankrupt law.

If it were a transaction solely between Kintzing and the bankers there seems to be no reason to doubt that the payment was such a preference as would enable the assignee to recover it back. But the case is not a little embarrassed by the fact that the indorser, Wilcox, was solvent, and was liable on the note to the bankers, and the question arises whether, under such circumstances, they were at liberty to refuse to receive payment of the principal without losing their claim upon the indorser, who was probably a mere accommodation surety. It is a question not without difficulty.

It is very true that an ingenious argument is made to show that by an arrangement between Kintzing and his partner the former assumed all the debts under the attempted compromise, and took all the property of the former, and that, by reason of the partial success of the compromise, Kintzing was no longer insolvent. But the facts in the finding of the court leave no room to doubt that Kintzing was, after the failure, always insolvent, in the sense of being unable to pay his current overdue debts, and of this plaintiffs could not be unaware, since they held the note, on which they received the money now sued for, about five months after its maturity, without payment, and without their signing the compromise paper. They must, therefore, have known that, in the sense of the Bankrupt law, Kintzing had been insolvent for months before they received payment.

Does the fact that Wilbox, the indorser, was solvent, and was liable, change the rule as to payment as a preference?

The statute in express terms forbids such preference, not only to an ordinary creditor of the bankrupt, but to any person who is under any liability for him; and it not only forbids payment, but it forbids any transfer or pledge of property as security to indemnify such persons. It is, therefore, very evident that the statute did not intend to place an indorser or other surety in any better position in this regard than the principal creditor, and that if the payment in the case before us had been made to the indorser, it would have been recoverable by the assignee. If the indorser had paid the note, as he was legally bound to do, when it fell due, or at any time afterwards, and then received the amount of the bankrupt, it could certainly have been recovered of him. Or if the money had been paid to him directly instead of the holder of the note it could have been recovered, or if the money or other property had been placed in his hand to meet the note or to secure him instead of paying it to the bankers, he would have been liable. He would not, therefore, have been placed in any worse position than he already occupied if the holders of the note had refused to receive the money of the bankrupt. It is very obvious that the statute intended, in pursuit of its policy of equal distribution, to exclude both the holder of the note and the surety or indorser from the right to receive payment from the insolvent bankrupt. It is forbidden. It is called a fraud upon the statute in one place and an evasion of it in another. It was made by the statute equally the duty of the holder of the note and of the indorser to refuse to receive such a payment.

Under these circumstances, whatever might have been the right of the indorser, in the absence of the Bankrupt law, to set up a tender by the debtor and a refusal of the note-holder to receive payment, as a defence to a suit against him as indorser, no court of law or equity could sustain such a defence, while that law furnishes the paramount rule of conduct for all the parties to the transaction; and when in obeying the mandates of that law the indorser is placed in no worse position than he was before, while by receiving the money the holder of the note makes himself liable to a judgment for the amount in favor of the bankrupt's assignee, and loses his right to recover, either of the indorser or of the bankrupt's estate.

We are of opinion, therefore, notwithstanding the hardship of the case, which is more apparent than real, that the payment must be held to be a preference within the Bankrupt law, and that the judgment of the court below, that the assignee should recover it, must be

AFFIRMED.

Notes