bank deposit
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 286 U.S. 254 - Blakey v. Brinson · 1932Most cited · 229 citing opinions
The relationship established between the bank and respondent by his savings account was, from its inception, that of debtor and creditor, and the credit balance . . . represented the amount of the bank's indebtedness to him.
How the Supreme Court has restated “bank deposit”
Each Supreme Court definition of “bank deposit,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “bank deposit”
Court decisions citing the 6 opinions that defined “bank deposit” — 1,090 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 6 definitions, chronological · 1864–1932
- ORIGINAL
All deposits made with bankers may be divided into two classes, namely, those in which the bank becomes bailee of the depositor, the title to the thing deposited remaining with the latter; and that other kind of deposit of money peculiar to banking business, in which the depositor, for his own convenience, parts with the title to his money, and loans it to the banker; and the latter, in consideration of the loan of the money and the right to use it for his own profit, agrees to refund the same amount, or any part thereof, on demand.
Where the deposit is general and there is no special agreement proved, it is doubtless true that the title of the money deposited in a bank passes to the bank, and the bank becomes liable to the depositor for the amount as a debt.
when [deposits] are received, unless there are stipulations to the contrary, they belong to the bank, become part of its general funds, and can be loaned by it as other moneys. The banker is accountable for the deposits which he receives as a debtor, and he agrees to discharge these debts by honoring the checks which the depositors shall from time to time draw on him. The contract between the parties is purely a legal one, and has nothing of the nature of a trust in it.
money paid into a bank ceases to be the money of the depositor and becomes the money of the bank which it may use, returning an equivalent when demanded, by paying a similar sum to that deposited. Such is undoubtedly the nature of the contract between a depositor and his banker. So also a collecting bank ordinarily becomes the owner of money collected by it for its correspondent, and consequently a debtor for the amount collected, under obligation to pay on demand, not the identical money received, but a sum equal in legal value.
debtor-creditor relationship
When money is deposited in bank, the contract that is made is between that bank and the depositor. Notwithstanding the provisions of the Bank Guaranty Law, there is, properly speaking, no contract between the depositor and other banks. The Bank Guaranty Law provided for a fund to be raised by assessments upon all the state banks, and, while this was regarded as an important safeguard for all depositors, it was but a police regulation, the sanction of which lay in the constitutional power of the state and not in contract.