Pennsylvania Mutual Life Insurance v. North Penn Bank

Citations

• 70 Pa. Super. 34
• 1918 Pa. Super. LEXIS 162

Syllabus

<p>Banks and banking — Principal and agent — Check—Forgery of endorsement.</p> <p>Where an insurance company draws a check in payment of a policy and sends it to its agent in another city to be delivered to the payee, and the agent fraudulently procures a woman to impersonate the payee to a bank at which the check is presented, identifies such woman as the payee, and the woman endorses the cheek in the name of the payee, .and the agent also endorses it with his own name after the woman’s endorsement, the bank upon which the check is drawn will be liable for the loss to the insurance company, if it appears that the agent had no other authority from his company than to deliver the check to the payee named therein.</p> <p>It is not within the apparent scope of the authority of an agent to whom a check is sent for delivery to a payee, to procure a fraudulent endorsement of the payee, add his own signature as evidence, and thus render the payment of the check a valid charge upon the account of his principal.</p>