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73 N.J.L. 683

State v. Twining

Supreme Court of New Jersey

Decided November 19, 1906

Supreme Court of New Jersey · decided 1906-11-19

<p>1. In determining whether the title of an act expresses its object within the meaning of the clause of the constitution on that subject, there should be attributed to the words used as. indicating that object such meaning as they had then acquired in common and legislative usage.</p> <p>2. The title of the' act entitled “An act concerning trust companies (Revision of 1899),” expresses its object to be legislation regulating not only trust companies incorporated under that designation, but also companies organized under the “Act for the incorporation of safe deposit and trust companies,” upon which had been conferred broad trust powers and which had been designated in supplements to the last-mentioned act as “trust companies.” ,</p> <p>3. Such a title includes in its expressed object not only regulation, but also such provision as might be deemed proper to enforce such regulation by penalties or prosecution.</p> <p>4. A paper exhibited to a person, authorized to examine the condition of a trust company, as the unrecorded minutes of a meeting of directors and containing a resolution for the purchase of shares of stock which the examiner had discovered among the assets of the company and inquired about, is a “paper” within the meaning-of section 17 of the Trust Companies act of 1899, and if false, and exhibited to the examiner with intent to deceive him, the officer or officers exhibiting it were guilty of a crime under that section.</p> <p>5. The facts presented in the bills of exception justified the trial judge in bringing to the attention of the jury the failure of the defendants to avail themselves of the privilege of testifying in their own behalf. State v. Parker, 32 Vroom 308; S. 0., 33 Id. 801.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1906-11-19

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently October 1958

11 state decisions

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Swayze, J.

¶1(dissenting). I think the words “false paper,” in section 17 of the act concerning trust companies, are used in the technical sense in which tire words would naturally be used by men conversant with the business of banking, and refer to such paper as may constitute assets of the trust company — promissory notes, checks, bonds, mortgages, cash items and paper of that character. The section evinces an intention to punish (1) the subscribing or making of a false statement of facts; (2) false entries in the books; (3) subscribing or exhibiting false paper. These three clauses seem to *693me mutually exclusive, and the document now in question naturally comes under the first class, and not under the third.

¶2The meaning of the words ought to be determined from the standpoint of those who drew the act at the time, and not from the standpoint of the chance that happened. The legislature would naturally have thought of a document of this kind as a part of the recorded minutes, and not as a loose paper, and could hardly have meant that every memorandum of the trust company might be a false paper within the meaning of a criminal statute like this.

¶3It is the essential character of the document which ought to determine whether it comes within the- definition of the crime denounced by the words “false paper.” That essential character does not depend upon the form which the document chanced to take, nor upon the material upon which it chanced to be written. If it had been a fictitious promissory note inscribed upon parchment, I think it would have been false paper, because of its essential character; and so I think it is not false paper when it is essentially a mere statement of facts intended to be recorded in the book of minutes, where it naturally belongs.

Dill, J.

¶4(dissenting). I concur in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Swayze, but I also think that there was no proof of exhibition, within the meaning of the statute in question, by the defendant Twining.

For affirmance — Ti-ie Chancellor, Garrison, Pitney, Bogert, Yredenburgh, Green, Gray. 7.For reversal — Swayze, Dill. 2.
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