Motor Credit Corporation v. Woolverton

99 So. 2d 286, 72 A.L.R. 2d 334
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedDecember 20, 1957
StatusPublished
Cited by27 cases

This text of 99 So. 2d 286 (Motor Credit Corporation v. Woolverton) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Motor Credit Corporation v. Woolverton, 99 So. 2d 286, 72 A.L.R. 2d 334 (Fla. 1957).

Opinion

99 So.2d 286 (1957)

MOTOR CREDIT CORPORATION, a Delaware corporation authorized to do business in Florida, Appellant,
v.
Daisy WOOLVERTON, Appellee.

Supreme Court of Florida.

December 20, 1957.

*287 Joseph A. Hackney and Caldwell, Parker, Foster, Wigginton & Miller, Miami, for appellant.

Victor H. Eskenas, Miami, for appellee

ROBERTS, Justice.

On this appeal we are concerned with the impact of Sec. 319.22 and Sec. 319.27(2), Fla. Stat. 1955, F.S.A., of the Certificate of Title Act, Ch. 23658, Acts of 1947, on a purchase from a dealer of a motor vehicle within the purview of the Act — specifically, a house trailer.

The trailer, when new, had been sold by the dealer to one Houghtaling under a conditional sale contract, the transaction being financed by the appellant finance company. The dealer, as conditional vendor, assigned the contract to the finance company under a "repurchase" assignment that obligated the dealer to pay to the finance company the balance owing under the contract if the trailer was repossessed from the conditional vendee. The finance company recorded its lien, as assignee of the contract, in the office of the Motor Vehicle Commissioner in Tallahassee. *288 After making a few payments on the trailer the conditional vendee, Houghtaling, returned it to the dealer, who then sold it to the appellee, Mrs. Woolverton, without telling her about the finance company's lien and without accounting to the finance company for the sale. Mrs. Woolverton did not obtain a certificate of title from the dealer — the dealer's president, Mr. Sutton, stating that she would receive it in a few days — nor did Mrs. Woolverton check the records of the Motor Vehicle Commissioner in Tallahassee. She paid the dealer the full purchase price of the trailer.

When he learned of the sale of the repossessed trailer to Mrs. Woolverton, the finance company's manager, Mr. Langran, demanded payment from the dealer. Mr. Sutton, without revealing that Mrs. Woolverton had paid for the trailer in full, made several payments on the trailer ostensibly on behalf of Mrs. Woolverton. Then the dealer filed a petition for voluntary bankruptcy, charging off its obligation to the finance company under the "repurchase" assignment, and Mr. Langran advised Mrs. Woolverton that she must pay the balance due under the Houghtaling contract or the finance company would repossess the trailer. In the face of an impending dispossession from her home, Mrs. Woolverton, an elderly lady, signed a conditional sales agreement prepared by Mr. Langran by which Mr. Sutton, as president of the now bankrupt dealer corporation, purported to sell and she and Mr. Sutton, as co-purchasers and co-obligors, agreed to purchase the trailer and to pay therefor an amount equivalent to that remaining due under the Houghtaling contract. The Sutton-Woolverton contract was, of course, assigned by Sutton to the finance company.

The instant litigation was initiated by Mrs. Woolverton, who filed suit against the finance company for a declaratory decree, for an injunction against the enforcement of its lien by the finance company, and for cancellation of the conditional sales agreement signed by her and Sutton, referred to above. The Chancellor heard the evidence of the parties and granted the relief prayed for by Mrs. Woolverton. The finance company has appealed.

The principle of law relied upon by the Chancellor in entering a decree in favor of Mrs. Woolverton was stated in Glass v. Continental Guaranty Corp., 81 Fla. 687, 88 So. 876, 879, 25 A.L.R. 312, as follows:

"But where an owner consigns personal property to a dealer in such goods with express or implied authority to sell, or delivers or consigns to another personal property with indicia of ownership, or of authority to sell, but with title reserved in the owner until the payment of the purchase price, a purchaser, who pays value for such goods and gets possession thereof without notice of the terms or conditions of the original delivery, consignment, or sale, obtains a good title as against the original owner, which will in general prevail against the latter's reserved title. [Citations.]
"Where one of two innocent parties must suffer through the act or negligence of a third person, the loss should fall upon the one who by his conduct created the circumstances which enabled the third party to perpetuate [perpetrate] the wrong or cause the loss."

This same principle is equally applicable to the circumstances of the instant case. As stated in 47 Am.Jur., Sec. 937, p. 145:

"Where a dealer has parted with possession of property conditionally sold but has regained possession of it, as upon retaking after default of the purchaser, without authorization of the assignee and without his knowledge or consent, a subsequent purchaser from the dealer does not obtain title as against the assignee. However, if the assignee of the conditional sales contract expressly or impliedly consents to the resale after repossession, *289 the purchaser from the conditional vendor secures good title."

See also cases collected in 47 A.L.R. 105, s. 88 A.L.R. 119.

On this appeal the finance company contends that, by the clear terms of the Certificate of Title Act, particularly Sec. 319.22 and Sec. 319.27(2), and the decision of this court in Dicks v. Colonial Finance Corp., Fla. 1956, 85 So.2d 874, "there is no longer any open market for second-hand motor vehicles in Florida" and that a purchaser from a dealer in a regularily established place of business can no longer rely upon the principles of law announced in Glass v. Continental Guaranty Corp., supra, 88 So. 876, and followed in Commercial Credit Co., Inc., v. Parker, 101 Fla. 928, 132 So. 640, as against a conditional vendor, or his assignee, under a duly recorded conditional sale contract.

Sec. 319.22 provides as follows:

"(1) * * * no person acquiring a motor vehicle from the owner thereof, whether such owner be a dealer or otherwise, hereafter shall acquire a marketable title in or to said motor vehicle until he, she, or it shall have had issued to him, her or it a certificate of title to said motor vehicle; nor shall any waiver or estoppel operate in favor of such person against a person having possession of such certificate of title or an assignment of such certificate for said motor vehicle for a valuable consideration. Except as otherwise provided herein, no court in any case at law or in equity shall recognize the right, title, claim or interest of any person in or to any such motor vehicle, hereafter sold or disposed of, or mortgaged or encumbered, unless evidenced by and on a certificate of title duly issued, in accordance with the provisions of this law."

Sec. 319.27(2), in effect, requires mortgages, trust receipts, conditional sale contracts, and other similar instruments covering a motor vehicle, to be recorded in order to be valid against subsequent purchasers, creditors, mortgagees and other lienholders or claimants. It provides for priority of liens and encumbrances according to the time at which they are noted upon the title certificate, and that "the lien shown on the application for original certificate of title shall take priority over all liens or encumbrances filed subsequent to the date shown on such application."

First, as to the effect of the recordation statute, Sec. 319.27(2), supra, as constructive notice to a subsequent purchaser from a dealer of the lien of the dealer's assignee: While there is a conflict among the courts of other jurisdictions, it was said in Fogle v.

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Bluebook (online)
99 So. 2d 286, 72 A.L.R. 2d 334, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/motor-credit-corporation-v-woolverton-fla-1957.