Pacific Southwest Trust & Savings Bank v. Tulledo

241 P. 574, 74 Cal. App. 629, 1925 Cal. App. LEXIS 328
CourtCalifornia Court of Appeal
DecidedOctober 19, 1925
DocketDocket No. 2972.
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 241 P. 574 (Pacific Southwest Trust & Savings Bank v. Tulledo) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pacific Southwest Trust & Savings Bank v. Tulledo, 241 P. 574, 74 Cal. App. 629, 1925 Cal. App. LEXIS 328 (Cal. Ct. App. 1925).

Opinion

PLUMMER, J.

Action to foreclose chattel mortgage on certain livestock. Plaintiff had judgihent and the defendants J. Y. Fernandes and Mary Y. Fernandes appeal. The record in this ease discloses that on or about the twentieth day of October, 1922', Mrs. M. Elma Foster, the owner of a certain ranch known as the Foster ranch in the county of Tulare and also of a certain band of cattle, *631 leased said ranch to one Y. Tulledo and also sold the livestock thereon to the said Tulledo, and to secure the payment of the purchase price thereof took from said Y. Tulledo a chattel mortgage covering the" personal property then and there sold and delivered to the said Tulledo, and also a promissory note evidencing the amount remaining due on said purchase price. That thereafter, and on or about the fourteenth day of November, 1922, said note and chattel mortgage were assigned to the plaintiff herein, and on the fifteenth day of November, 1922, the chattel mortgage was recorded in the office of the county recorder of Tulare County, state of California, in the official records of said county. The property covered by the mortgage is set out and described therein and consisted of fifty-nine head of cattle and other personal property not involved herein. It also appears from the record that prior to the purchase by the defendant Tulledo from Mrs. Foster of the property herein referred to, the said Tulledo had, upon a conditional contract of sale, purchased from the defendant Fernandes certain other livestock consisting of a band of cattle of between forty and fifty head; that the said defendant Tulledo had this band of cattle on the Foster place, together with other cattle, numbering in all ninety-six head, a portion of which is alleged to have belonged to a brother of the defendant Tulledo. It further appears that after the transactions herein referred to were had, the cattle were further marked by the said Tulledo so as to render them more readily capable of being identified and some of them moved to different ranches.

The defendant Tulledo, not having complied with the terms and conditions of the conditional contract of sale by which he acquired possession of the cattle theretofore belonging to the defendants Fernandes, the said Fernandes took possession of a portion thereof, and on or about the - day of February, 1923, began an action in claim and delivery, and took possession of some forty head of the cattle hereinbefore referred to, claiming to be the owner thereof. Said cattle were taken under claim and delivery proceedings by the sheriff of the county of Tulare in an action against the defendant Y. Tulledo, and, no redelivery bond being executed by him, were by the sheriff, upon the faith of the sureties, executed by the defendants Fernandes, turned *632 over to them. Thereafter, and on or about the sixth day ■ of April, 1923, the plaintiff began this action to foreclose the chattel mortgage hereinbefore referred to as having been executed by the defendant Tulledo to Mrs. M. Elma Foster and assigned to the plaintiff, joining as defendants in said action V. Tulledo and J. Y. and Mary Y. Fernandes. The complaint sets forth the execution and the assignment of the mortgage, the noncompliance with its terms by the defendant Tulledo, the mortgagor therein named, and also alleges that the defendants Fernandes claim some interest in said property. The defendants Fernandes demurred to the sufficiency of the plaintiff’s complaint, which being overruled, made answer to said complaint and, among other things, alleged ownership of the property in question and also set forth that on or about the twenty-ninth day of June, 1923, said defendants Fernandes and plaintiff began an action in the superior court of the county of Tulare to recover possession of fifty-six head of livestock; that upon the filing of said complaint the defendants furnished the undertaking required by law and instructed the sheriff of said county to take possession of said property; that possession thereof was taken by the sheriff, was thereafter delivered to the said Fernandes and that the said action in claim and delivery is still at issue in the superior court of said county and not yet tried. The defendants Fernandes alleged that they had no livestock in their possession included in said chattel mortgage and further set forth:

V That by reason of the want of knowledge as to what if any of said live stock taken by the said sheriff of said County of Tulare in the action of claim and delivery by these defendants against said Y. Tulledo, were included in said chattel mortgage set out in said amended complaint, these defendants cannot state how many if any of the live stock so taken by said sheriff were included in said chattel mortgage, and basing their denial on that ground deny that any of the live stock taken by the said sheriff of said county of Tulare, were live stock included in the mortgage executed to said M. Elma Foster.”

The court made findings in accordance with the prayer of plaintiff’s complaint, found that the property in question was the property sold by Mrs. M. Elma Foster to the defendant Tulledo and was not the property sold by the *633 defendants Fernandes to the defendant Tulledo, and also made the following finding:

“That on or about January 2'9th, 1923, defendants J. V. Fernandes and Mary Y. Fernandes began an action against the said Y. Tulledo in the Superior Court of the said County of Tulare for the recovery of the possession of fifty-six head of live stock and other personal property owned by said J. Y. Fernandes and Mary Y. Fernandes, and on the filing of said complaint furnished to the Sheriff of said County of Tulare, the undertaking and affidavit required by law, together with instructions to said Sheriff to take the personal property mentioned in said complaint and affidavit from the possession of said defendant Y. Tulledo and pursuant to said instructions, said Sheriff, did, thereafter, take a portion of the personal property, to-wit, twenty-six head of heifers and calves he was instructed to take, and after retaining them for five days, said Sheriff delivered possession thereof to said plaintiffs in that action, and that said action is now at issue in said Superior Court of this County, and has not yet been tried.”

Upon this appeal it was argued by the appellants, first, that their demurrer should have been sustained, and, second, that the property was in custodia legis and therefore that any judgment of foreclosure and sale before the termination of the replevin suit was premature and contrary to law. While it may be true that the demurrer of the defendants Fernandes was technically well taken, we think that any error therein is cured by the provisions of section éy2 of article YI of the Constitution relative to any errors or matters of pleading which do not result in a miscarriage of justice. The testimony relative to the description of the property appeared to the trial court to be sufficient to enable anyone upon inquiry to ascertain and determine the property covered by the chattel mortgage, and we have not had pointed out to us any reason why the findings of the trial court in this particular should be disturbed.

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Related

Foster v. Fernandes
270 P. 188 (California Supreme Court, 1928)

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Bluebook (online)
241 P. 574, 74 Cal. App. 629, 1925 Cal. App. LEXIS 328, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pacific-southwest-trust-savings-bank-v-tulledo-calctapp-1925.