103 Ga. 171 | Ga. | 1897
The Citizens Banking Company of Eastman-brought an action against Peacock & Carr, warehousemen, for the recovery of sixty-seven bales of cotton, which were described in the petition, and of the alleged value of five thousand dollars. The trial resulted in a nonsuit, and to this judgment of the court, and other rulings made in the case, the plaintiff excepted.
By our code such a deposit of warehouse receipts is a pledge or pawn. Civil Code, § 2956. It will be noticed that this section of the code declares that delivery of the property is essential to a bailment of this character. It is self-explanatory; however, on the subject of delivery, when it declares: “but promissory notes and evidences of debt, warehouse receipts, elevator receipts, bills of lading, or other commercial paper symbolic of property, may be delivered in pledge.” Originally, warehouse receipts, elevator receipts, and bills of lading were not by our statute authorized to be pledged as collateral. By an act approved October 3, 1887, this section of the code, which prior to that time only authorized the pledge, in express terms; of promissory notes and evidences of debt, was amended, and warehouse receipts, elevator receipts, and bills of lading, or other commercial paper symbolic of property, were expressly made the subject of pledge. Acts 1887, p. 36. Prior to the passage of this act, this court, in the cases of the Planters’ Rice-Mill Co. v. Merchants National Bank, 78 Ga. 574, and National Exchange Bank v. Graniteville Mfg. Co. 79 Ga. 22, in passing upon questions in which the legal effect of the pledge of ware
Prof. Schouler, in his Law of Bailments and Carriers (§ 190), speaking of transfers of bills of lading as security for debt, says: “Such transfers are firmly sustained by American courts as amounting to a pledge of the goods themselves for the pledgor’s paper indebtedness, and, whether the transit were by land or sea, valid, on the score of a constructive delivery as against both the pledgee and the public. The exercise of further dominion