Summary

Portrait of Noah Haynes Swayne Noah Haynes Swayne National Bank v. Burkhardt — Opinion of the Court

When a check on itself is offered to a bank as a deposit, the bank has the option to accept or reject it, or to receive it upon such conditions as may be agreed upon. If it be rejected, there is no room for any doubt or question between the parties. If, on the other hand, the check is offered as a deposit and received as a deposit, there being no fraud and the check genuine, the parties are no less bound and concluded than in the former case.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Noah Haynes Swayne Noah Haynes Swayne National Bank v. Burkhardt — Opinion of the Court

A general usage may be proved in proper cases, to remove ambiguities and uncertainties in a contract, or to annex incidents, but it cannot destroy, contradict, or modify what is otherwise manifest. Where the intent and meaning of the parties are clear, evidence of a usage to the contrary is irrelevant and unavailing.
Usage cannot make a contract where there is none, nor prevent the effect of the settled rules of law.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Noah Haynes Swayne Noah Haynes Swayne National Bank v. Burkhardt — Opinion of the Court

This charge the court gave, adding, 'If it was handed in as a deposit, it became a deposit at the time it was received. Taking the surrounding circumstances into consideration, if it was received by the teller as a deposit, it became a deposit. That I give you, for it has these words in it, 'or received as a deposit."
For most purposes the law regards the entire day as an indivisible unit. But when the priority of one legal right over another, depending upon the order of events occurring on the same day, is involved, this rule is necessarily departed from.
Source: Wikisource

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