Drabant v. Cure

124 A. 340, 280 Pa. 181, 1924 Pa. LEXIS 487
CourtSupreme Court of Pennsylvania
DecidedMarch 24, 1924
DocketAppeal, No. 85
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 124 A. 340 (Drabant v. Cure) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Pennsylvania primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Drabant v. Cure, 124 A. 340, 280 Pa. 181, 1924 Pa. LEXIS 487 (Pa. 1924).

Opinion

Opinion by

Mr. Justice Kephart,

Appellant sued a trustee in bankruptcy to recover the value of her chattels wrongfully seized and sold as the property of the bankrupt. When possession was taken by the trustee, reclamation proceedings were instituted; it was then incumbent on appellant to protect the claim throughout the litigation. The referee held the property to be that of the bankrupt; an appeal to the United States District Court followed, resulting, on January 31, 1918, in a decision adverse to appellant. It was there decreed “that the property be treated and disposed of by the trustee as the property of the bankrupt.”

Later, on the 7th of February, 1918, a petition for an order of sale was presented by the trustee. The order was granted, the sale to take place February 23,1918, or about a year after the adjudication in bankruptcy, and after possession had been taken by the trustee, reclamation proceedings having been begun in April, 1917. The expense of preserving the property, consisting of cows, calves, horses, colts and farm implements was great and steadily increasing; it became necessary for the trustee to act.

After the order to sell had been lifted, but before the day of sale, claimant appealed from the decree of the district court in the reclamation proceeding to the United States Circuit Court Of Appeals. The trustee was not notified of this appeal until after the sale. No bond was filed, no supersedeas asked for or allowed, and no request made to suspend the order of sale by appellant ; it was not disturbed.

No question of good faith in the conduct of the sale arises. A large number of persons were present, and some bid on the property; presumably the goods brought their market value. A return of sale was made and confirmed according to law.

Later, the circuit court of appeals reversed the decree of the district court in the reclamation proceedings, saying, “Finding, as we do, the good faith of the parties, [184]*184and that the change of possession the master held necessary would have defeated the fair and honest sale the parties had in view, we are of opinion the proceeds of the personal property should have been awarded Mrs. Mary Drabant, its owner. The decree below will therefore be reversed and the cause remitted for further proceedings in accordance with this opinion.” See Drabant v. Cure, 251 Fed. 47, 49.

Just how the fact of an execution and a sale, taking place after the record had been removed to the circuit court, was made a part of that record, has not been shown. From the order, we must accept as part of the record in that court the fact of execution and sale; by it appellant is bound. So that we have, without objection from anyone, in a proceeding originally instituted to try title to certain personal property, which, in the course of the litigation, was sold, the parties and the court thereafter treating the contest as one over the distribution of the proceeds of that sale, title of course determining that question. This appellant, in that view of the case, was awarded, received and accepted the proceeds of sale, in addition to some costs and expenses incurred in connection therewith. Just here it may be stated her attorney bought all the property in for her at trustee’s sale.

Notwithstanding this record and her acts, appellant now contends the trustee, when the appeal without stay or supersedeas was pending, sold the property at his peril, and is liable for the full and true value of the goods to be shown by witnesses, likening the instant proceeding to a similar one in state courts where the sheriff erroneously sells under a fieri facias.

The situations are not parallel. We first encounter the fact that appellant purchased at the bankruptcy sale her own property, and the money used for that purpose was refunded to her. Where a claimant is the purchaser, he cannot recover from the execution plaintiff more than was paid inasmuch as he is in possession of the property [185]*185taken from him: 18 Ency. of Plead. & Prac. 885; 2 R. C. L. 300; McCracken v. Paul, 65 Ark. 553, 47 S. W. 854, 67 Am. St. R. 648.

When the trustee took possession of the insolvent’s property, as he was required to do under the law, he included a part of this appellant’s chattels. She was a stranger to the proceeding, and the trustee had no legal right to include her chattels in those of the bankrupt. Appellant had many courses to pursue. She chose to institute reclamation proceedings, and thereby submitted herself to the jurisdiction of the federal court, as it related to the bankruptcy of John Kemara.

The referee decided against her, and the District Court sustained that decision. The order of sale here granted extended to the bankrupt’s property and, so far as the trustee was concerned, it included that claimed by appellant. The matter adjudicated by the referee and the district court adversely to appellant was the title to that property. When the appeal was taken to the Circuit Court of Appeals it was incumbent on the claimant to surround it with all the protection accorded by law, otherwise she would lose the specific property involved. Had the appeal operated as a supersedeas, it would have stayed the hand of the officer as to the identical property. She chose not to perfect her appeal or secure the suspension of the referee’s order, and, having submitted herself to the jurisdiction of the federal court, it must follow that the law incident to such submission attaches. Though successful in appeal, while she would not (and did not) lose the value of the property, but, through her neglect to protect herself, did lose the specific articles claimed in the reclamation proceedings.

It is not similar to a case where a sheriff, on a fi. fa. against a defendant, levies on the property of a stranger to the execution and sells. Here not only does defendant sell under a lawful order of court, but, by judicial direction, he sells property the title to which has been adjudicated by a court of competent jurisdiction to be in the [186]*186bankrupt; a contest had been waged in court over that property and the claimant did not take the necessary steps to protect the property in specie.

While the chattels were those of a stranger, unlike the ordinary execution, where such property is levied on and sold without any effort on the owner’s part to maintain title, here claimant contested the seizure and submitted her case to an appropriate proceeding as provided by federal law, and is bound thereby. The facts are more analogous to our interpleader proceeding, where the contest is over the proceeds of the sale of the property which the officer had been directed to sell, or the case of perishable goods seized and ordered sold pending the determination of the title.

If the case is parallel to our fi. fa., of what avail would the Act of 1897 be if an execution may be executed only at the officer’s peril where an appeal is not a supersedeas. Section 4 (p. 68) of the act fixes a time within which an appeal acts as a supersedeas, and the statute further fixes the conditions under which it will so operate. If, on a claim of property, the appeal is not perfected within the time fixed by law, the execution subsequently issued may be proceeded on without peril to the officer.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Related

Metro Real Estate v. Siaway, M.
2021 Pa. Super. 31 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 2021)
Zion v. Pilch
9 Pa. D. & C.3d 110 (Delaware County Court of Common Pleas, 1978)
Self Drive It Corp. Case
134 A.2d 662 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1957)
Shinn v. Stemler
47 A.2d 294 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1946)
Wilkinson v. United Parcel Service of Pennsylvania, Inc.
43 A.2d 414 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1945)
Koenig v. Curran's Restaurant & Baking Co.
183 A. 451 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1935)
Geha v. Baltimore Life Insurance
168 A. 527 (Superior Court of Pennsylvania, 1933)
Baldwin v. Anderson
299 P. 341 (Idaho Supreme Court, 1931)
Charak v. John T. Porter Co.
135 A. 730 (Supreme Court of Pennsylvania, 1926)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
124 A. 340, 280 Pa. 181, 1924 Pa. LEXIS 487, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/drabant-v-cure-pa-1924.