Page:Henry Osborn Taylor, A Treatise on the Law of Private Corporations (5th ed, 1905).djvu/231

 PART II.] ACTS WITHIN THE CORPORATE POWERS. [§ 246. to the bank to ascertain whether the certification is correct, and the teller says that it is, this answer will cover no more than the certification of a check already raised would have covered, and will not render the bank liable to pay the amount of the check. 1 § 246. The legal effect is similar when an uncertified check is sent to the bank for information. The law presumes knowl- edge on the part of the bank only of the drawer's signature and the state of his account ; and a verbal statement that the check is " good," or " all right," extends only to the matters of which the bank is presumed to have knowledge, unless the teller's attention is especially directed beyond those matters. And if the bauk subsequently pays the check to the person who sent it to the bank for information (or sernble to any one else), it may recover back the money if the check turns out to have been raised. For the general principle is that money paid by mistake on a raised check ma^ be recovered back. 2 1 Clews v. Bank of New York, 89 N. Y. 418. (See a criticism on this case in the following note.) 2 Espy v. Bank of Cincinnati, 18 Wall. 604; Corn Exchange Bank v. Nassau Bank, 91 N. Y. 74; Frank v. Lanier, ib. 112. See § C72 for the responsibility of a bank that pays a check to which the drawer's or in- dorsees signature is forged. A teller is an ageut acting under a special or express authority, and not one so appointed by a principal that there can arise any implication of undefined powers; aud a teller's statement that an indorsement on a check is goodwill not bind the bank, when the indorser is not a customer of the bauk, aud the statement is made at the request of a stranger, and not in the ordinary course of de- fendant's business. Walker o. St. Louis Nat. Bank, 5 Mo. App. 214. When there is a receiving as well as a paying teller, the former alone has authority, by virtue of his office, to receive deposits. A paying teller (when there is a receiving teller) in receiving funds from a stranger upon a promise to apply them in payment of a bill or note; is the agent of the stranger, not of the bank; and con- sequently, the bank will not be liable for a breach or neglect of the duty which the teller assumes. Thatcher v. Bauk of the State of N. Y., 5 Sand. 121 (said to have been affirmed in the Court of Appeals). The situation where a pei-son sends an uncertified check to a bank to in- quire whether it is good, as in Espy v. Bank of Cincinnati, differs from Clews o. Bank of New York in a point that leads the writer to doubt the correctness of the decision in the latter case, in which, indeed, Judge Danforth gave an able dissenting opinion. Since the bank is presumed to know only its depositor's signa- ture and the state of his account, anything further that a teller might s ly in regard to an uncertified check would presumably, as well as in the nature of things, be merely the ex- 211