Blanc v. Germania Nat. Bank

Citations

• 114 La. 739
• 38 So. 537
• 1905 La. LEXIS 533

Syllabus

<p>CORPORATIONS — NOTES — EXECUTION — VALIDITY-PLED GE — ESTOPPEL—WAREHOUSE RECEIPTS — INDORSEMENT.</p> <p>1. Plaintiff sues to recover back certain property which the company of which he is the liquidating commissioner, acting as a corporation, gave to the defendant in pledge; and the defendant challenges the regularity of plaintiff’s appointment, and his right to stand in judgment, on the ground that said company was not a corporation. Held that, having received the pledged property from said company as a corporation, defendant cannot, for the purpose of holding on to the property, deny the corporate character of said company.</p> <p>2. Although the charter of a corporation requires that the notes of the corporation shall be signed by the president and countersigned by the secretary, a note of the corporation signed by the secretary alone will be valid if issued in due course of business, and especially if the corporation was in the habit of disregarding that provision of its charter. And it would make no difference that the note had not been given for a plain loan, but had been discounted. Nor that it was the creditors of the corporation, and not the corporation itself, that contested its validity, the corporation being defunct and insolvent.</p> <p>3. But even if said note, because of nonconformity with the charter, were invalid, a pledge executed along with it to secure its payment would not lapse for want of a principal obligation, but would remain in full force and effect, as security for the return of the money received in the transaction.</p> <p>4. A pledge of warehouse receipts need not be evidenced by any writing, but may be effected by mere delivery.</p> <p>5. Act 72 of 1876, p. 113, has no application to United States bonded warehouse receipts; hence such receipts are not statutory instruments regulated by said act, but mere ordinary warehouse receipts, governed by commercial law, and, as a consequence, need not be paragraphed, “For hypothecation,” in o