COMMONWEALTH BANK & TRUST CO. v. MORRIS, 77 S.W.2d 871

CURETON, Chief Justice. This case, which is before us on certified question, involves the constitutionality of

chapter 16, General Laws of the Forty-Third Legislature, enacted in 1933 (Vernon’s Ann. Civ. St. art. 375a). The act is one providing that the Banking Commissioner of the state, with the approval of the Governor, may declare financial moratoriums “for and invoke a uniform limitation withdrawal, coextensive with the boundaries of the State, of deposits from all State Banks, National Banks, State Banks and Trust Companies, Trust Companies, Private Banks, Building and Loan Associations, and all other banking and financial institutions in the State of Texas, or both such moratoriums and limitations of withdrawal of deposits.”

Section 1. It likewise confers upon the commissioner authority to promulgate any and all orders and decrees necessary to enforce the powers delegated, etc. The certificate before us shows that the appellee on March 1, 1933, had on deposit in the savings department of the appellant $202, subject to withdrawal upon sixty days’ notice, The appellee gave the notice to the bank, op that date.

At the end of the sixty-day period he demanded his money, but the bank decline^ to pay any amount thereof in excess of 5 peif cent, of the deposit, because of the order of the Commissioner of Banking, based upon the Bank Moratorium Act above referred to, which became effective March-4, 1933. Up,on the failure of the bank to pay the entire amount of the deposit, suit was instituted by appellee; and upon trial, judgment, and appeal, the Court of Civil Appeals certified to us the question of the validity of the Bank' Moratorium Act.

The certificate of the Court of Civil Appeals was filed in this court on June 7, 1934, and the ease was submitted, with the other morá; toria cases, on the 8th day of October, 19341 When- we came to consider the case, we were satisfied, from our knowledge of general banking conditions, that the appellant could and would have paid the deposit had it not ceased business. We therefore took the necessary steps — as we were authorized • to do — to ascertain whether or not this case is moot.

Upon our request the Commissioner of Banking prepared a certificate of the status of the appellant bank, and we have caused it to be filed in this cause. This certificate shows that the appellant was taken over by the Commissioner of Banking on July 2⅛ 1934, and that it is now being liquidated under the statutes by that officer.

Whatever may have been involved when the suit was instituted and when the certificate was filed in this court last June, the mora-toria statutes and the commissioner’s proclamations thereunder ceased to be applicable when the commissioner took charge of the bank for the purpose of liquidation under other statutes. This being so, the validity, of the Moratorium Act is no longer a justiciable question in this cause, and, since this question is the sole one certified in this case, the cause as it exists in this court is moot. The certificate is accordingly dismissed. ..'