Posted by:
Seth Bursby
on Sep 23, 2025
By Don McBride and Geoff Ogden
Banks, broker-dealers, insurance companies, sureties and others holding cash, securities or other valuable property sometimes receive demands to hand over the property to someone other than the apparent owner. This could be in the form of a dispute over the rightful beneficiary to a life insurance policy issued in connection with an ERISA plan. Or, a bank could receive demands by non-customers attempting to claw back the proceeds of a check they issued to the bank’s customer, who deposited the check. Or, a broker-dealer could receive demands and threats of legal action by its own customer after it restricts an account pursuant to a court order. In all of these examples, litigating the claims of ownership among each of the claimants separately would be costly and could result in determinations of ownership that are inconsistent with one another.
Read more in the September-October issue of the St. Louis Law Journal, out now!