Buelow v. Abell

121 So. 657, 9 La. App. 624, 1928 La. App. LEXIS 375
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedDecember 19, 1928
DocketNo. 3354
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 121 So. 657 (Buelow v. Abell) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Buelow v. Abell, 121 So. 657, 9 La. App. 624, 1928 La. App. LEXIS 375 (La. Ct. App. 1928).

Opinion

ODOM, J.

A tenant farmer, named R. E. Jordan, cultivated in the year 1927, land belonging to William P. Martin, under the share system, the agreement being that one-fourth of the cotton should go to the land-owner as rent. Jordan gathered the crop of twenty-one bales and carried it to the Delhi Compress Company, of Delhi, Louisiana, and had issued to him a negotiable warehouse receipt for each bale of' the cotton. He delivered to Martin, the landowner, seventeen of these warehouse receipts, but retained ¡possession of the other four. He sold the four bales of cotton, for which he had receipts, to E. A. Buelow & Company, cotton buyers, of Vicksburg, Mississippi, through Buelow’s agent and buyer, Stout, who lived at or near Delhi where the cotton was grown. In payment of the four bales of cotton, Stout drew a draft on Buelow & Company and attached thereto the four negotiable warehouse receipts. The draft, with receipts attached, was forwarded to Buelow & Company and was paid. The cotton remained in the warehouse at Delhi. The sale by Jordan to Buelow & Company took place on November 22, 1927. .

Subsequently, on December 20th, or about thirty days after the cotton had been sold and while it yet remained in the warehouse at Delhi and while the receipts were in the hands of the purchasers, Buelow & Company, Martin, the landowner, filed suit against his tenant, Jordan, alleging that he owned an undivided one-fourth interest in said cotton and that, as a furnisher of necessary supplies, he had a privilege on the other three-fourths interest alleged to belong to Jordan, under Article 3217 of the Civil Code. The cotton was sequestered in the hands of the warehouse company.

On February 13, 1928, judgment was rendered for Martin, the landowner, recognizing him as owner of an undivided one-fourth interest in the cotton and that “his lien and privilege as furnisher of necessary plantation supplies to the extent of $410.97 be recognized on and rendered executory against the remaining three-fourths undivided interest in the above described cotton owned by the said R. E. Jordan.”

As stated, this suit was filed and judgment rendered sometime after Buelow & Company had purchased the cotton from Jordan. Buelow & Company were not made parties to these proceedings and knew nothing about them until about March 10, 1928, when the Sheriff was about to sell the cotton at auction to satisfy Martin’s judgment.

Buelow & Company, plaintiffs in the present suit, then came into, court, asserting ownership of the entire interest in said cotton under their purchase from Jordan free from any lien for plantation supplies, and enjoined the sale of the cotton. Martin answered, reiterating his claim of ownership of one-fourth interest in the cotton and reasserting his privilege on the other three-fourths interest.

The District Court rendered judgment, recognizing Martin as the owner of one-fourth of the cotton, but rejected his de[626]*626mauds for a recognition of his privilege. Prom this judgment both parties appealed.

OPINION

Our conclusion is that the judgment appealed from is correct, insofar as it rejects Martin’s claim to a privilege on the cotton, and that it is erroneous insofar as it recognizes Martin as owner of one-fourth of the cotton.

Counsel for Martin, the landowner, who seeks to reverse the judgment of the lower court on the question of privilege, has filed no brief, but says, “the law, with respect to liens, and especially the kind contended for in the above case, is so well settled in our jurisprudence that attention need not be called to it.”

What counsel would have us hold is that as a matter of law the privilege for plantation supplies, under Article 3217 of the Civil Code, follows the crop under any and all conditions, and he contends that the jurisprudence is settled that it does. We think counsel is in error.

It is true that in the case of National Bank of Commerce vs. Sullivan (Union Oil Company, Intervenor), 117 La. 163, 41 So. 480, the Court held that such privilege is not confined to the growing crop, “but bears upon the products after they are severed from the soil and follows them into the hands of a purchaser who, buying directly from the planter, is presumed to know that such privilege may or actually does exist.” But that holding, as an unqualified proposition of law, was seriously questioned, if not altogether repudiated, in a later case, that of Union Seed & Fertilizer Company vs. J. Supple’s Sons Planting Company et al., 139 La. 692, 71 So. 949, where the organ of the Court, referring to the Sullivan case, supra, said:

“In fact, the decision cannot even be considered authority for the general proposition that the privilege of the furnisher of supplies follows the crop in the hands of third persons without registry of the claim; because, to ■ that extent, the then Chief Justice and one of the Associate Justices dissented from the opinion, and another of the Justices was absent, and did not take part in the decision.”

The Court at that time was composed of five justices, only four of whom took part, and, while all of the justices taking part in that case concurred in the decree under the facts there disclosed, yet two of them stated:

“We are not prepared to assent to the general proposition that the privilege of the furnisher of supplies follows the crop into the hands of third persons.”

Therefore, the principle there announced was concurred in by only two justices, not a majority of the court. We do not understand that the holding in the Sullivan case under the facts found by the court has been questioned; on the contrary, it has been affirmed. The criticism is that the rule was too broadly stated by the organ of the Court.

The facts in the Sullivan case were that in the month of September, while the cotton was still in the field and while the money advanced to the farmer to make the crop was being expended for that purpose, a third person bargained with the planter for a future delivery of the seed and advanced to him a certain sum in consideration of his obligation to make the delivery. The Court said:

“No one will pretend that such a transaction was a sale, and, no one will deny that the intervenor entered into it with full knowledge of the fact that the seed was probably, if not certainly, subject to privileges for labor and supplies.”

[627]*627And the Court in commenting said that when the probability that there were privileges on the crop had become a certainty, insofar as the intervenor was concerned, it carried away from the plantation all the seed it could. The Court held that, under the circumstances, the seed in the hands of the intervenor were burdened with the furnisher’s privilege. But the intervenor was not an innocent purchaser; in fact, the Court said the transaction between the planter and the intervenor did not amount to a sale.

In a later case, that of Brooklyn Cooperage Company vs. Cora Planting Company, 137 La. 807, 69 So. 195, a broker bought sugar on the plantation where it was produced, and, while the sugar had been delivered by the planter, it had not been removed. The Court held that the sugar was subject to the furnisher’s lien. In that case, the Judge of the lower court held, it seems, that there had been no actual delivery of the sugar, and, Justice Land, the organ of the Court, said:

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Bluebook (online)
121 So. 657, 9 La. App. 624, 1928 La. App. LEXIS 375, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/buelow-v-abell-lactapp-1928.