This is a writ of error to the circuit court of the United States for the Eastern district of Missouri. The plaintiffs in error were the plaintiffs in the original action, the gravamen of which was that the defendant, the Fourth National Bank of St. Louis, conspired with the firm of Norvell, Camfield & Co., who were dealers in cotton in that city, to obtain from the plaintiffs, McLeod & Reid, residing in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, the acceptance of a draft drawn by Norvell, Camfield & Co. upon said plaintiffs for £6,000, and that this draft was accompanied by a fraudulent bill of lading, on the strength of which plaintiffs accepted and were compelled to pay it. The bill of lading was for a certain number of bales of cotton, which were falsely represented to contain 276,850 pounds, whereas the aggregate weight of these bales, when reweighed at the place of delivery, was only 192,385 pounds. That this bill of lading was false, that it was gotten up by fraud, and that this fraud deceived the plaintiffs, there is no question; nor is there any doubt that the fraud was perpetrated by Norvell, Camfield & Co. The case was tried before a jury on the general issue, by which the bank denied all the allegations of fraud, and, in general, everything charged in the declaration. The court refused several requests to charge made by the plaintiffs with regard to the connection of the bank with this fraud, and in the end peremptorily instructed the jury that there was no evidence to support such an allegation of fraud on the part of the defendant, and that they must find for the bank.
This bill of exceptions, like so many others that we find in the records that have been sent up to us recently, is simply a stenographic report of all that took place at the trial, and we are expected to consider the whole of this evidence, and pick out such portions of it as may be pertinent to the issue, as if addressed to us originally, and to ascertain whether there was any evidence which should have been left to the jury on the question of the participation of the defendant in the fraud.
The main facts in the case are substantially as follows:
Norvell, Camfield & Co. were dealers in cotton in St. Louis. They bought this commodity throughout the cotton region, brought it to that city, and then sold it in the markets of the eastern states and of Europe. To enable them to carry on their extensive business, they required large advances from the capitalists of St. Louis, and these were obtained mainly from its banks. The defendant bank, in this case, had so advanced them about $64,000, and in every instance, as such advances were made, the firm deposited with the bank what were known as 'cotton notes.' These were instruments made by a warehouse company, whose business it was to receive and take care of cottor until it was sold, or its delivery demanded by the person who originally deposited it in the warehouse, or by some holder of the cotton notes. Each note represented a bale of cotton, and the following is the form of these instruments in general use in that business:
'[No. of bale.] Received in store of _, one bale of cotton, in apparent good order, of the above number and following marks, [marks, if any,] deliverable to bearer upon return of this receipt and payment of warehouse charges; risk of fire excepted.
[Signed] ', Secretary.'
The cotton of Norvell, Camfield & Co., which is the subject of this controversy, was stored in the warehouse of the St. Louis Cotton Compress Company, and the notes therefor were in the hands of the bank, when Camfield, one of that firm, without obtaining the notes from the bank, or any orders from it, had a very large amount of this cotton transferred to a cotton 'pickery,' as it was called. There the bales were opened, the cotton picked, reassorted and repacked, and the tags with the numbers on them, which represented the cotton as it was originally delivered to the warehouse company, reattached to these readjusted bales. In doing this, the quantity of cotton in each bale was so much reduced that the difference was made, which we have already stated, between the amount which was called for by the bill of lading and the amount which was received in Glasgow.