Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 7.djvu/388

 376 FBBEBAIi REPORTER. �Dearle v. Hall so far as to uphold the garnishment of a non- negotiable debt which iad been equitably assigned without notice. We have already seen that this ia not the law in England nor in Massachusetts. Neither is it the law of the United States generally. Drake, Attachments, c. 24; Cor- nick V. Richards, 3 Lea. 1. The supreme court of Tennes- see in that case refused to extend the rule to shares of stock, though it applies in that state to choses in action. As shares are not choses in action, and as attaching creditors are not purehasers, Dearle v. Hall ia not in point. �6. It remains only to cite two decisions of the supreme court, which, in principle, are decisive of this case. In Bank v. Lanier, 11 Wall. 369, a national bank was required to make good to the bolder of an unreoorded certificato the value of his shares, although they had been trans- ferred on the bocks to a subsequent purchaser for value. That purchaser, to be snrp, was not before the court, but if his title was better than that of the plaintifif, the bank was justified in transferring the shares and would have had a per- fect defence. Dickinson v. Central Nat, Bank, 129 Masa. 279 ; Gill v. Continental Gas Co. L. E. 7 Ex. 232. If a purchaser for value could not hold against the holder of the unrecorded certificate, a fortiori of an attaching creditor. �Bullard v. The Bank, 18 Wall. 589, is in the same Une of thought. It decides that certificates of shares in national banks are so far negotiable, or quMsi negotiable, that a by-law of the bank, which undertakes to make them subject to the debt of the transferrer to the bank itself, is void. On the same ground it was held that a by-law like that of the Eliot National Bank, if intended to give attaching creditors a bet- ter title than transferees who had not recorded their certifi- cates, was void. Sargent v. Marine Ry. Co. 9 Pick. 201. Here, again, the argument is a fortiori. If the bank cannot create a Uen by its by-law, much less can it obtain one indi- rectly, by attachment, upon the construction of an ambigu- ous by-law. �My conclusion is that the attachment of Conant's shares cannot prevail against the complainants' earlier title, whether ��� �