Page:Halsbury Laws of England v1 1907.pdf/806

 Bankers and Banking.

584 Sect.

1.

Receipt of

Money on Current Account.

the receipt of money (a) by a banker from or on account of his customer constitutes him merely the debtor of the customer (6)0 He is not a trustee for the customer, and the latter has no right to inquire into or question the use made of the money by the banker (c).

Customer's title to

paid

money

in.

is

1193. In the absence of notice, express or implied, the banker not concerned to question the customer's title to money paid in

by him

{d).

money afterwards prove to be that of another person, cannot be recovered as a general rule by such person from the banker, if he be under a binding contract to repay it to the person who paid it in (e). Bond ^c/e transactions on the part of the banker prior to the intervention of the real owner will not be disturbed to the prejudice of the former (/). But the banker is not at liberty to disregard intimations conveyed to him by the title or character in which the account is opened, or otherwise (cj). He cannot retain any benefit to himself from wrongful dealing with any fund he knows to be affected with a trust where such benefit has been designed or stipulated for by him (//). A banker cannot assert his lien over an account known to be a trust account, whether so described or not (i). But a banker may refuse to accept an account in any form which implies If

the

that

it is

it

Notice of trust.

banker

is

by a trust {k). Apart from benefit to himself, the not, as a rule, entitled to question operations on a trust

affected

{a) In so far as the receipt of rnone)'' on current account consists in the collection of cheques and similar instruments, see pp. 590 et seq.,post. (b) Foley v. Hill (1848), 2 H. L. Oas. 28. (c) Ibid. ; Re Agra and Masterman's Bank, Ex parte Waring (1866), 36 L. J. (CH.) 151. {d) Bodenham v. Hosh'ns (1852), 21 L. J. (cH.) 864 Thomson v. Clydesdale Banky [1893] A. C. 282 ; Tassell v. Cooper (1850), 9 C. B. 509. Qumre whether a banker should accept payments in by or on behalf of an undischarged bankrupt, the moneys so j)aid in heincr prima facie the property of the trustee. (e) Compare Calland v. Loyd (1840), 6 M. & W. 26 ; Tassell v. Cooper, supra; and compare Pinto v. Santos (1814), 5 Taunt. 447. In the case of Healey v. Bank of New South Wales, November 28, 1900, not reported, the Judicial Committee rejected the claim of the depositor to moneys he had paid into the bank, such moneys being the proceeds of Iraud on the Government, for which he had been convicted and punished, treating such moneys as

payable to the Government. (/) Re Montague (1897), 76 L. T. 203, which does not appear to have been decided with reference to the Married Women's Property Act, 1882 (45 & 46 Vict. c. 75), but on general principles. [g) Bodenham v. Hoskins, supra j Ex parte Adair, Re Gross (1871), 24 L. T. 198 ; Bridgman v. Gill (1857), 24 Beav. 302. Compare Ba^ik of New South Wales v. Goulburn Valley Butter Co. Proprietary, Ltd., [1902] A. C. 543. (h) Gray v. Johnston (1868), L. K. 3 H. L. 1. In one cdse, Foxtonv. Manchester and Liverpool District Banking Co. (1881), 44 L. T. 406, Fry, J. appears to have held that the fact that the bank indirectly derived benefit from such dealing invalidated the transaction. In Coleman v. Bucks and Oxon Union Bank, [1897] 2 Ch. 243, Byrne, J. shows that, to come within Gray v. Johnston, there must at least be an ascertained debt due to the bank, which on pressure by the bank is satisfied or reduced by payment from the trust account. Compare Shields v. Bank of Ireland, [1901] 1 Ir. R. 222. (i) Union Bank of Australia v. Murray -Aynsley, [1898] A. C. 693 ; Bank of New South ales v. Goulburn Valley Butter Co. Proprietary, Ltd., supra. {k) Ex parte Kingston, Re Gross (1871), 6 Ch. App. 632, per Mellish, L.J., at

W

p. 640.