Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 1.djvu/310

 30^ fSDEBAL B£P0BT£5. �Selicman and others v. Wells and another. ( Circuit Court, S- D. New York. January 20, 1880.) �DeAFT — SpECIPIO Sdm I^AID DrAWBE — TbANSFEB TO TBT7STBE OF Bank- �BUPT Dkawer. The holder of a draft is entitled to recover a specifie sum of money paid to the drawee for the express purpose of taking up such draft, and transferred, after payment had been duly demanded, to the trustees of the bankrupt drawer. �Whbeler, J. Kaufman & Co., bankers at New York, drew three drafts of 25,000 francs each, a few days apart, on the Basler Bank Verein, at Basle, Switzerland, where they had no funds, at sixty days each, payable to their own order, and negotiated them severally to the orators, who presented them for acceptance. After the first two had been 80 presented, and before the bank knew of the third, the bank, through its agents, Alfred Merian & Co., bankers at New York, called upon Kaufman & Co. to provide funds to meet the two drafts, whereupon they delivered to Merian & Co. $14,500 in gold, to meet the three drafts, which Merian & Co. received for that purpose and transmitted to the Basler Bank Varein. The bank then accepted the two drafts and paid them, whioh, with charges, amounted to $10,139.81, leaving $4,360.19 towards the other, but not sufficient to pay it, and refused to accept or pay the other. Kaufman & Co. were adjudged bankrupts, and the orator, Joseph Selig- man, and the defendants, became trustees of their estate in bankruptoy, and, on the demand of the defendants, the bank transmitted and delivered to them the sum of $4,360.19, gold, against the claim of the orators. This bill is brought to recover that stim. �That a check drawn against a fund does not, of îlself, oper- ate as aii assignment of the fnnd, or any part of it, so as to vest any right to it in the holder of the check before accept- ance, either at law or in equity, is well enough settled, both on principle and by authority. Bank of Republic v. Millar, 10 Wall. 152; lîosenthal v. Mastin Bank, per Blatchford, C. J., S. D. N. Y. November 25, 1879. Here the checks were not drawn against any funds in the hands of the drawees, but the ��� �