Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 32.djvu/67

33 LETTERS OF CREDIT 33 forum is concerned? *° Short of this, the issuer's protection must be the conditions of the letter of credit and his security contract with the holder whereby he is protected so long as he abides by and exacts its conditions. It should be observed that in this situa- tion the interests of both issuer and addressee are best subserved by a theory of the letter as showing that issuer holds money to the use of addressee. On such a theory, interpleader may clearly be resorted to, while on other theories of the letter the technical re- quirements of interpleader would raise many difl&culties. A letter of credit may or may not fix an expiration date, though it may be assumed that the contract between buyer and seller will always contain a time provision. Three p>ossibilities suggest them- selves : The letter of credit may expressly fix a date when the credit shall expire, or it may fix no date of expiration, or it may fix no such date but may contain a statement that it is to "expire by limitation." Questions may arise where the buyer-holder and seller-addressee afterwards modify the provisions of the sale con- tract as to time of performance. If the letter of credit expressly fixes a time, the addressee, on any theory of the letter, may not avail himself of the credit unless he complies with its terms within the time fixed. In mercantile contracts time is an essential term,^^ and whether the expiration date named in a letter be regarded as a limitation of an offer, or a condition precedent in an acknowledg- ment of money held to addressee's use, the result would be the same. If no time is fixed much would depend on which theory is adopted. On the offer theory, no time being fixed, the offer would remain open for a reasonable time, and it would seem that in the absence of any other indication the limits of what is reasonable would be determined by the time provisions of the buyer-seller contract. On the guarantee theory the sales contract would be the principal obligation and it would follow that any time modification thereof without the issuer's knowledge and consent would release his lia- bility. On the theory that the letter of credit is a notification of a contract between holder and issuer for benefit of addressee, we should have to be governed by that contract, if we could ascertain » Norrington v. Wright, 115 U. S. 188 (1885).
 * " Stevenson v. Anderson, 2 Ves. & B. 407 (1814).