In this case we are concerned with the bearing of state law upon the enforcement of an assessment against the estate of a stockholder of a national bank.
Elvira J. Parks died March 20, 1928, owning twelve shares of the capital stock of the Austin National Bank of Chicago. May 17, 1928, the probate court of Cook county, Illinois, granted letters testamentary to the executors named in her will, who filed an inventory and supplemental inventory in the probate court within one year of the date of the letters. March 30, 1931, the Comptroller of the Currency declared the bank insolvent, closed it, and appointed the petitioner receiver, and May 21, 1931, assessed all stockholders, including the executors of Elvira J. Parks, 100 per cent. of the par value of their stock. The executors refused to honor the receiver's demand for payment, and on September 1, 1933, he filed his claim in the probate court for $1,327.17, the amount of the assessment with interest to the date of filing. January 13, 1934, the court disallowed the claim. The receiver appealed to the circuit court where the case was tried de novo. That court, applying a state statute, disallowed the claim as against undistributed assets in the hands of executors inventoried within one year from the date of the grant of letters because the claim did not accrue and was not presented to the probate court within that period, but allowed it as to assets not inventoried within the year. (From a stipulation filed in this court it appears that there are in the executors' possession inventoried assets in excess of the amount of petitioner's claim; that the estate is solvent; and that there are no assets not inventoried within one year from the granting of the letters, or discovered after the expiration of that period.) The Appellate Court of the First District of Illinois affirmed the judgment. A certificate of importance, requisite for a review by the Supreme Court of the state, was refused. Certiorari was granted to resolve a conflict respecting the construction of relevant federal statutes.
U.S.C.Tit. 12, § 64 (12 U.S.C.A. § 64) is in part:
'The stockholders of every national banking association shall be held individually responsible for all contracts, debts, and engagements of such association, each to the amount of his stock therein, at the par value thereof in addition to the amount invested in such stock.'
'Persons holding stock as executors, administrators, guardians, or trustees, shall not be personally subject to any liabilities as stockholders; but the estates and funds in their hands shall be liable in like manner and to the same extent as the testator, intestate, ward, or person interested in such trust funds would be, if living and competent to act and hold the stock in his own name.'
The petitioner asserts these sections give his claim a quality so superior to that of other contingent claims against a decedent's estate that it must be recognized by state tribunals without regard to limitations upon allowance imposed by state laws.
The liability is imposed by the statute. The original subscriber and likewise an immediate or remote vendee of the shares assumes a status-that of stockholder. The assumption of this status involves whatever conditions or burdens the federal statutes have imposed as incident to the holding of national bank shares. The contingent obligation to pay an assessment is rendered absolute by the Comptroller's action in ordering one; whether that action be taken during the stockholder's life or after his death. From the moment of the Comptroller's order for assessment the bank's receiver has a claim which would support an action of debt at common law against a living stockholder, or the executor of a deceased stockholder. And if assessment be made after the estate of a deceased stockholder has been distributed the receiver may proceed to recover the amount from distributees or heirs, if, and to the extent, they are liable for debts of the estate under the law of the domicile.