FAMOUS CASE OF CRITTEN V. CHEMICAL NATIONAL BANK--STORY OF THE CASE INCLUDED IN THE OPINION OF THE COURT OF APPEALS AS WRITTEN BYJUSTICE EDGAR M. CULLEN--THE PINKERTON CASE OF"BECKER"--STORY OF HOW HE SECURED $20,000 THROUGH THE ALTERATION OF A $12 CHECK--BECKER'SCOMMENTS ABOUT HIMSELF--A CRITICISM OF BECKER AND HIS WORK--NAMES OF SOME CASES IN WHICH CHEMICAL EVIDENCE WAS PRESENTED TO COURTS AND JURIES.
THE books contain no clearer or more forcible exposition of "Chemico-legal" ink, in its relationship to facts adduced from illustrated scientific testimony, than is to be found in the final opinion written by that eminent jurist Hon. Edgar M. Cullen on behalf of the majority of the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, in the case of De Frees Critten v. The Chemical National Bank. It was the author's privilege to be the expert employed in the lower court about whose testimony Judge Cullen remarks (N. Y. Rep., 171, p. 223)"The alteration of the checks by Davis was established beyond contradiction," and again, p. 227, "The skill of the criminal has kept pace with the advance in honest arts and a forgery may be made so skillfully as to deceive not only the bank but the drawer of the check as to the genuineness of his own signature."The main facts are included in the portion of the opinion cited:
"The plaintiffs kept a large and active account with the defendant, and this action is to recover an alleged balance of a deposit due to them from the bank. The plaintiffs had in their employ a clerk named Davis. It was the duty of Davis to fill up the checks which it might be necessary for the plaintiffs to give in the course of business, to make corresponding entries in the stubs of the check book and present the checks so prepared to Mr. Critten, one of the plaintiffs, for signature, together with the bills in payment of which they were drawn.
After signing a check Critten would place it and the bill in an envelope addressed to the proper party, seal the envelope and put it in the mailing drawer. During the period from September, 1897, to October, 1899, in twenty-four separate instances Davis abstracted one of the envelopes from the mailing drawer, opened it, obliterated by acids the name of the payee and the amount specified in the check, then made the check payable to cash and raised its amount, in the majority of cases, by the sum of $100. He would draw the money on the check so altered from the defendant bank, pay the bill for which the check was drawn in cash and appropriate the excess. On one occasion Davis did not collect the altered check from the defendant, but deposited it to his own credit in another bank. When a check was presented to Critten for signature the number of dollars for which it was drawn would be cut in the check by a punching instrument.
When Davis altered a check he would punch a new figure in front of those already appearing in the check. The checks so altered by Davis were charged to the account of the plaintiff s, which was balanced every two months and the vouchers returned to them from the bank. To Davis himself the plaintiffs, as a rule, intrusted the verification of the bank balance. This work having in the absence of Davis been committed to another person, the forgeries were discovered and Davis was arrested and punished. It is the amount of these forged checks, over and above the sums for which they were originally drawn, that this action is brought to recover. The defendant pleaded payment and charged negligence on plaintiff's part, both in the manner in which the checks were drawn and in the failure to discover the forgeries when the pass book was balanced and the vouchers surrendered. On the trial the alteration of the checks by Davis was established beyond contradiction and the substantial issue litigated was that of the plaintiff's negligence. The referee rendered a short decision in favor of the plaintiffs in which he states as the ground of his decision that the plaintiffs were not negligent either in signing the checks as drawn by Davis or in failing to discover the forgeries at an earlier date than that at which they were made known to them.
"The relation existing between a bank and a depositor being that of debtor and creditor, the bank can justify a payment on the depositor's account only upon the actual direction of the depositor.
'The question arising on such paper (checks) between drawee and drawer, however, always relate to what the one has authorized the other to do.
