132 Misc. 322 | City of New York Municipal Court | 1928
Plaintiff was a depositor with the defendant bank and between April 15 and July 15, 1927, checks aggregating $1,685 were forged with the plaintiff’s name and paid by the defendant. The forgery was committed by a former employee of the plaintiff and was not discovered until the latter part of July, 1927. Canceled vouchers were received by the plaintiff in regular course and he himself testified that between the dates mentioned he did not make .any personal examination of his canceled vouchers and he gave no ¡attention to those matters, leaving them entirely to his regularly ■employed auditor to make the examination of the canceled vouchers. ‘The auditor testified that he was a public accountant and made monthly examinations of the plaintiff’s banking transactions; that be checked the checks as they came from the bank with the <eash book and verified that amount with the bank’s statement; that 'he examined the canceled checks, all of which were entered in the «cash book, and that that was the usual monthly procedure followed. The cash book contained the check numbers, the date of the check, the payee, the amount and classification of the expenditure, the same information as was contained on the stub of the check book. He did not, however, examine the checks with respect to the signature and he testified further that he would know the signature if he had looked particularly at it for the purpose of identification. In addition to the monthly services it appears that there was also a quarterly examination at which he and the plaintiff discussed matters to determine whether the checks were for the business or for his personal expenses, and with this in view each check was gone over as it was entered in the cash book. Plaintiff himself did absolutely nothing to discover whether any of his canceled