Farmers' & Mechanics' National Bank v. Ryan
Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Error to the District Court of Philadelphia: No. 148, to July Term 1869. On the 31st of October 1868 James Eyan issued an attachment execution against The West Branch and Susquehanna Canal Company, in which the Pennsylvania Eailroad Company and the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ National Bank were the garnishees.
Read the full summary
Error to the District Court of Philadelphia: No. 148, to July Term 1869. On the 31st of October 1868 James Eyan issued an attachment execution against The West Branch and Susquehanna Canal Company, in which the Pennsylvania Eailroad Company and the Farmers’ and Mechanics’ National Bank were the garnishees. They filed six interrogatories, of which the 2d and 3d were: 2. Have you had any business transactions with the said defendant? If yea, how did your accounts stand at the time the writ in the above case was served upon you? Was there or was there not at that time, or has there been since,…
1Opinion of the Court
The opinion of the court was delivered,
by Read, J.
— The first ground assumed by the plaintiffs in error, is, that the deposit accounts of a corporation, however numerous, are all exempted from attachment executions by its judgment-creditors. If this were the law, then a great improvement corporation with a bank account of a million of dollars could set at defiance its small creditors. A deposit in a bank by a corporation is a debt by the bank to the corporation, the bank being the debtor and the 'corporation the creditor, which is liable to attachment execution by a judgment-creditor of the…