Ford v. Commercial Securities Co.

79 So. 2d 253, 223 Miss. 736, 1955 Miss. LEXIS 432
CourtMississippi Supreme Court
DecidedApril 4, 1955
DocketNos. 39595, 39800
StatusPublished
Cited by6 cases

This text of 79 So. 2d 253 (Ford v. Commercial Securities Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Mississippi Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ford v. Commercial Securities Co., 79 So. 2d 253, 223 Miss. 736, 1955 Miss. LEXIS 432 (Mich. 1955).

Opinion

Ethridge, J.

These two consolidated cases involve the question of whether the trial court was correct in sustaining appellee’s motions to strike and its demurrers to appellant’s petitions for leave to file a bill of review. For reasons subsequently stated, we think that this action was erroneous.

In August 1952, appellee, Commercial Securities Company, Inc., filed a bill of complaint in the Chancery Court of Warren County against appellant, Jack E. Ford, seeking to recover from him the balance due on twenty-eight conditional sale contracts which were assigned to appellee with recourse by Mississippi Motor Company. The bill charged that Ford was a partner in the business known as Mississippi Motor Company, along with E. G. Clarke. Clarke was shot and killed by his wife on June 20, 1952. A preliminary hearing was had concerning the killing, but she was not indicted for any crime. Clarke appears to have been the managing partner in Mississippi Motor Company, and Ford the one who financed and generally supervised it.

Trial was held in January 1953, and the final decree of the chancery court, dated January 21, 1953, adjudicated that Ford was liable along with Clarke on the conditional sale contracts, and gave a decree for Commercial Securities against Ford for $17,747.37, the balance due on the twenty-eight conditional sale contracts, and certain wholesale financing obligations. On appeal, that [741]*741decree was affirmed as modified in Ford v. Commercial Securities Co., Inc., 70 So. 2d 525 (Miss. 1954), motion to correct judgment sustained in part, 72 So. 2d 201. This Court held that Ford and Clarke were partners in Mississippi Motor Company, and that Ford was liable on the conditional sale contracts.

Also considered by this Court in that opinion was a “Petition for Bill of Review, ’ ’ which Ford had filed about two and one-half months after the final decree of January 21, 1953. That petition charged that Ford had obtained certain newly discovered evidence which would show that the findings of balances due on the conditional sale contracts were incorrect, and that Commercial Securities had wrongfully and fraudulently withheld from the trial court certain facts concerning the balances due, which warranted the reopening of the original decree. The chancery court sustained a motion to dismiss that first petition for bill of review. That action was also affirmed by this Court in its opinion in 70 So. 2d 525, 528. After that affirmance of February 1954, and on April 15, 1954, Ford filed a second petition, designated as petition for leave to file bill of review, to which there was attached a copy of a bill of review and the affidavits of sixteen witnesses, including those of Ford and John Prewitt, his attorney. The two latter affidavits dealt with both the balances due on the conditional sale contracts and the diligence of affiants in obtaining the facts. On April 23,1954, appellee’s motion to strike this second petition was sustained, and that action is now before us in cause No. 39,595. On January 20,1955, Ford filed a third petition for leave to file bill of review, to which was attached a copy of a bill of review, and the affidavits of thirty-three persons, including Ford and Prewitt. On January 29, 1955, the trial court sustained appellee’s motion to strike this petition, and its general and special demurrers to it. That action is now before us in cause No. 39,800, which has been consolidated with No. 39065.

[742]*742 The question is whether the trial court should have permitted Ford to file his bill of review in the light of the facts alleged and well pleaded in the petition therefor. For the purposes of this decision, on the motions and demurrers, the facts which are well pleaded in a petition for leave to file a petition for bill of review must be taken as true. Eden Drainage District of Yazoo County v. Swaim, 213 Miss. 386, 54 So. 2d 547, suggestion of error overruled in 55 So. 2d 439 (1951); 41 Am. Jur., Pleading, Section 353; Griffith, Mississippi Chancery Practice, Sections 640, 286, 288.

It will serve no purpose at this time to undertake to set out in detail the charges made in Ford’s petitions for leave to file a bill of review, and the contents of the affidavits. We have considered them carefully and fully, and have concluded that the chancery court should have permitted him to file a petition for bill of review. In substance, the second and third petitions allege that, prior to the entry of the original decree in January 1953, neither appellant nor his attorney had reason to believe or any knowledge of the fact that appellee’s claims as to the balances due on the twenty-eight conditional sale contracts, and the wholesale financing contracts, were false and fraudulent. Both of them had diligently attempted to find the true facts after the untimely death of Clarke, who managed the business of Mississippi Motor Company and kept its records. The original decree was obtained by the false and fraudulent representations of appellee, which fraud was known to appellant and his attorney only after the entry of the final decree, when the records of E. G. Clarke, deceased, were found in a large paper sack behind some clothes in a closet of decedent’s home.

Appellee’s original bill of complaint had charged that all or practically all of the twenty-eight automobiles covered by the contracts in question had been returned to Mississippi Motor Company, when in fact eleven of them were never repossessed by appellee, and more than four[743]*743teen were repossessed by appellee after Clarke’s death, never accounted for by appellee, and never delivered either to Clarke or Ford. Appellee fraudulently concealed from the court the fact that after Clarke’s death it had repossessed these cars, and either disposed of them or abandoned them, and did not account for them. Appellee fraudulently concealed and withheld from the court numerous credits for payments in part or in toto on several of the automobiles.

The petition further charged that appellee fraudulently obtained from appellant an agreement, which was inserted in the final decree of January 21, 1953, that Ford owed appellee the sum of $3,833.13 on certain cars which were floor-planned under a wholesale contract; that in fact on two of these cars Ford had found in the records of Clarke, discovered after the final decree, receipts issued by appellee for payments in full of two of the cars which were floor-planned; that although Bradshaw, an agent of appellee, testified that five of the automobiles were sold for a little more than $1,200, they were actually sold for $1,400, and that the reasonable value of the five automobiles so sold a few weeks before the sale was $3,800 rather than $1,400. Attached to the third petition for leave to file a bill of review were thirty-three affidavits by numerous persons, some of whom stated that particular identified automobiles, which were covered by the twenty-eight conditional sale contracts originally sued on, either had not been repossessed by appellee, or had been repossessed, sold and not accounted for, or had been abandoned by appellee.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
79 So. 2d 253, 223 Miss. 736, 1955 Miss. LEXIS 432, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ford-v-commercial-securities-co-miss-1955.