Christopher v. Norvell
Headline: Banking law upheld: married woman holding national bank stock can be personally required to pay a Comptroller assessment, allowing receivers to collect shareholders’ pro rata contributions to cover the bank’s debts.
Holding: The Court affirmed that a married woman who owned national bank stock is personally liable for the Comptroller’s assessment to pay the bank’s debts, because that liability is statutory and not defeated by state marital incapacity.
- Allows receivers to collect shareholders’ pro rata assessments to pay failed banks’ debts.
- Married women who hold national bank stock can face personal lawsuits for assessments.
- State rules preventing married women’s contracts do not remove federal statutory liability.
Summary
Background
The receiver of the First National Bank of Florida sued Henrietta S. Christopher, a married woman who held fifteen shares of the bank’s stock, to collect an assessment the Comptroller of the Currency made after the bank failed. The shares were bequeathed to her in 1886 and were transferred by her father’s executors to her name; she received the stock certificate in November 1887. She received semi‑annual dividends through February 1896 and her name appeared on the bank’s shareholder registry when the bank suspended in 1903. The Circuit Court entered a personal judgment against her, and the court below affirmed.
Reasoning
The central question was whether Mrs. Christopher’s married status at the time she acquired the stock, or at the bank’s failure, prevented a personal judgment for the Comptroller’s assessment. The Court held that the liability rests on the federal national‑banking statute, which makes shareholders individually liable to the par value of their stock, and is not a private contract that state rules about a married woman’s contractual capacity can override. The Court relied on prior decisions and emphasized that only executors, administrators, guardians, and trustees are exempt. Because Florida law did not forbid a married woman’s ownership of bank stock, the federal statute governed and supported the judgment.
Real world impact
The decision means shareholders, including married women who held stock, can be sued to pay pro rata assessments to cover a failed national bank’s debts. State limitations on a married woman’s power to contract do not eliminate the federal statutory liability. The Court did not decide how the judgment would be satisfied or what property could be reached to collect payment.
Dissents or concurrances
Justices White and McKenna joined the Court’s result; no separate dissent alters the outcome.
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