266 Mo. 202 | Mo. | 1915
OPINIÓN.
This is an application by two trust companies of Kansas City for a mandamus requiring the respondent, State Superintendent of Insurance, to
Under the present act, the Bank Commissioner is charged with the same duties of custody and preservation of the funds which were imposed on the Superintendent of Insurance, and it is chargeable in his hands with the same obligations of the trust company with which it was chargeable in the hands of his predecessor. The Bank Commissioner is also required to make the same certificate of the fact of such deposit and of the solvency of the trust company, before it can do the business specified in the present act. It is perfectly clear that the Superintendent of Insurance can no longer perform these duties. And it necessarily follows that the securities which were intended to guarantee the business of the depositor in this State, should be placed now in the hands of the person now charged with the duty of preserving them for that purpose, and of issuing a certificate to the depositor so as t,o entitle it to engage in business in this State.
We see no escape from the conclusion that a proper construction of the present act is that it meant to do away, after its passage, with any further duties in respect to the custody of securities on the part of the Superintendent of Insurance, and to charge those duties upon the State Bank Commissioner, since they can only be adequately performed by a custody of the securities required by law to be deposited by trust companies before engaging in the business they are permitted to carry on, and the new act expressly requires
Let the writ prayed for be made permanent upon the conditions above stated.