Ghiselli Bros. v. Ryan, Inc.

22 Am. Samoa 2d 57
CourtHigh Court of American Samoa
DecidedSeptember 1, 1992
DocketCA No. 103-89
StatusPublished

This text of 22 Am. Samoa 2d 57 (Ghiselli Bros. v. Ryan, Inc.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering High Court of American Samoa primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ghiselli Bros. v. Ryan, Inc., 22 Am. Samoa 2d 57 (amsamoa 1992).

Opinion

[58]*58On Motions for Reconsideration or New Trial, Motions for Summary Judgment, and Motions for Stay of Execution:

On June 4, 1991, this Court issued its Opinion and Order on Motion for Summary Judgment, which found both defendants, Ryan, Inc. ("Ryan") and Amerika Samoa Bank ("ASB"), jointly and severally liable to the plaintiff Ghiselli Bros., Inc. ("Ghiselli") in the amount of $44,033.38. This sum reflected the purchase price for a container of meat products shipped c.i.f. by Ghiselli to Ryan, for which ASB was to act as the collecting bank; the products were discovered to be spoiled when the container was opened, so Ryan stopped payment on the check that it had previously tendered to ASB for payment of the consignment. All three parties have since filed motions for reconsideration; Ryan alternatively moved for a new trial. In addition, ASB and Ryan have moved for opposing summary judgments on their cross-claims against each other. Both defendants have also moved for a stay of execution in the event their relevant motions are denied.

Plaintiffs motion for reconsideration was at least partially denied by the Court’s order of June 17, 1991. The Court denied plaintiffs motion to reconsider "having to do with its request for attorney fees either as incidental damages or collection costs." The attorney fees are thus no longer at issue. Plaintiff has, however, reiterated its request for an award of pre-judgment and post-judgment interest on the debt owed.

Both defendants seek remittitur of the award of damages by $12,000, as Ghiselli received that sum from the insurer1 of the spoiled container on December 8, 1989. This was the only basis for ASB’s Motion for Reconsideration.

Ryan’s Motion for Reconsideration or New Trial, filed June 14, 1991, and corrected June 21, 1991, alleges several errors by the Court, including the above remittitur issue, the grant of summary judgment for [59]*59plaintiff, and the failure to grant summary judgment for Ryan against ASB. These are discussed in more detail below.

Ryan’s motion for summary judgment rests on ASB’s alleged negligence in retaining the original insurance documents and bill of lading, both of which Ryan obtained when it delivered the check and returned to ASB upon discovery of the spoilage, or alternatively on ASB’s breach of its contract with Ghiselli to accept only local currency from Ryan when acting as Ghiselli’s collecting bank.

ASB’s motion for summary judgment rests on its claim that Ryan is ultimately liable for the sum because Ryan ordered ASB to stop payment on the check which paid for the goods, and ASB’s compliance with this stop-payment order resulted in ASB’s liability to Ghiselli.

All of these motions were consolidated for hearing and were heard on October 25, 1991.

DISCUSSION

1. Interest

The plaintiff asked for interest both in the original complaint, which resulted in the Opinion and Order filed June 4, 1991, and in its motion to reconsider, which resulted in the Order filed June 17, 1991; neither order addressed this issue.

Plaintiff asked for interest a third time at the hearing on October 25, 1991. The defendants opposed this claim. A.S.C.A. § 28.1501(a) provides that "[t]he rate of interest when there is no written agreement with respect thereto shall be 6 percent a year, and interest shall be presumed on overdue debts." (Emphasis added). This presumption was applied in Pritchard v. Amerika Samoa Bank, 8 A.S.R.2d 157, 162 (App. Div. 1988), in which the appellate court held that "[t]he statutory rate where no interest is specified is 6 %." See also Meridian Breckwoldt Samoa, Ltd. v. Haleck, 7 A.S.R.2d 95, 101 (1988). Both cases then imposed pre-judgment interest from the date the respective indebtedness became due until the dates of judgment and post-judgment interest thereafter. While the silence of this Court on two previous occasions might normally be taken as an implicit denial of the motion, in this case the object of the motion, interest, is statutorily presumed and therefore should be awarded. We thus grant plaintiffs motion insofar as it seeks reconsideration of any implied denial that may have occurred.

[60]*602. Remittitur

Ghiselli’s Memorandum of Points and Authorities in support of its Motion for Summary Judgment asked for the amount of the sight draft "less any set-off from the insurance settlement, if applicable," but the issue was not addressed by the Court. It was then raised in the Motion for Reconsideration by ASB but put off for further hearing by the Court’s Order on the Motions for Reconsideration of June 17, 1991, as not having yet been argued in a hearing.2 Ryan’s Motion for Reconsideration or New Trial also raised this issue, but that motion has yet to be addressed as well.

Ghiselli now argues that the insurance amount is not a windfall, but an "accommodation" from the insurer due to Ghiselli’s position as a good customer of the insurance company. Ghiselli cites Procter & Gamble Distributing Co. v. Lawrence American Field Warehousing Corp., 213 N.E.2d 873 (N. Y. 1965), to support its claim that the money belongs to either Ghiselli or the insurance company and that this Court therefore has no power to decide the issue because the insurance company is not a party. In Proctor & Gamble, however, the money at issue was paid as a deposit by the purchaser of vegetable oil that vanished; Proctor & Gamble might have had an obligation to return some or all of the deposit, and because the purchaser was not a party to the action, the court could not determine the rights and obligations regarding the money. Here, the money is a payment from an insurer; it has nothing to do with a potential obligation to refund the "deposit" because the goods were never received. The money is clearly a payment for a loss, whether it is called an accommodation or a settlement, and such payment is the purpose of insurance companies.

A similar situation confronted the court in Meridian Breckwoldt Samoa, Ltd. v. Haleck, 7 A.S.R.2d 95, 98-100 (1988). In that case, the defendant agreed to purchase a quantity of "safety glass" for windshields from the plaintiff. The safety glass was delivered, but the defendant refused to pay for it. Plaintiff and its parent company in Germany then sought to recover the price of the glass from the shipping line that had released the glass to the plaintiff without receiving full payment as required by the shipping contract. The parent company eventually obtained a settlement from the shipping line. In the later suit filed in [61]*61American Samoa, the court held that the plaintiff could not recover the entire purchase price because it had been partially reimbursed by the shipping line.

The Court in its Opinion and Order of June 4, 1991, concluded that Ghiselli bore no risk of loss since the goods were shipped on c.i.f. terms.3 Thus, when Ghiselli first approached the insurance company with a claim on the loss, the latter could deal with Ghiselli only as an agent of Ryan, since the c.i.f. policy benefited Ryan once the goods were delivered to the.carrier in California.

We find the reasoning in Meridian

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22 Am. Samoa 2d 57, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ghiselli-bros-v-ryan-inc-amsamoa-1992.