Sosa v. Heirs of Morales Díaz

58 P.R. 362
CourtSupreme Court of Puerto Rico
DecidedMarch 28, 1941
DocketNo. 8114
StatusPublished

This text of 58 P.R. 362 (Sosa v. Heirs of Morales Díaz) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Puerto Rico primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Sosa v. Heirs of Morales Díaz, 58 P.R. 362 (prsupreme 1941).

Opinion

Mr. Justice De Jesús

delivered tlie opinion of the Court.

Angel Sosa owned a grocery store in Mayagüez, where-Alejandro Rodriguez worked as a clerk. Rodriguez owed to-Juan Morales Diaz the amount of $74.47 for groceries which the latter had sold him for a store which Rodriguez had owned before he was employed by Sosa. To collect his claim,. Morales Diaz sued Sosa and Rodriguez in the Municipal Court of Mayagüez under the theory that they were partners. To secure the effectiveness of the judgment which he-might obtain, on September 17, 1934, he attached Sosa’s business, and as a consequence of the attachment all the-stock was delivered to Morales Diaz as trustee, the business-being closed. The municipal court rendered judgment against Rodríguez and adjudged the codefendant Sosa free from, liability. Morales Diaz appealed to the district court and the latter, on March 11, 1935, rendered judgment similar to-the municipal court, on the grounds that there was no “contractual relation” between Morales Díaz and Sosa. The-case being remanded to the municipal court, the attached, stock was returned to Sosa.

To claim the damages which he alleged to have suffered by reason of the attachment, Sosa filed this suit in the lower-court on July 11, 1935, against the heirs of Juan Morales-Diaz, who are his widow and legitimate children named iit [364]*364the complaint. After amending said complaint twice, the •case came to trial, and a judgment was issued for the plaintiff, ordering the defendants to pay to him jointly and severally the amount of $774.70, and costs but not attorney’s fees.

The appellants argue that the complaint does not contain facts sufficient to constitute a cause of action. They maintain that it is insufficient because the damages claimed are not collectible because they are remote and speculative, inasmuch as according to the opinion rendered by the trial court, when Morales Diaz requested and obtained the attachment, he acted without malice and without the intention of causing damage to the heirs defendants and that according to the case of Lowande v. Otero & Co. et al., 15 P.R.R. 181, in these eases only real damages can be claimed and not speculative damages.

The lower court, when it rendered the judgment appealed from, only considered the damages really caused, and completely discarded those which it classified as remote or speculative, as appears from the following paragraph of the ■opinion:

“By virtue of this conclusion at which the court has arrived, it understands that the defendants must not be ordered to pay specula-■live damages, such as the amount which the plaintiff claims he paid for the site of the store which was attached, accounts receivable which he did collect when the store was attached, loss of his credit by the •defendant, attorney’s fees paid in that proceeding, payment of the light and water bills and the wages of the clerk during the time the ■store was closed; the judgment must be limited to the damages really suffered by the plaintiff herein through the loss of the groceries ■and merchandise attached, and the income which he has failed to receive from his business, as the immediate and direct cause of the attachment during the six months which elapsed until the final judgment in the suit where the attachment was decreed, and the legal interest on said amounts.’’ (J. R. page 46.)

The items of damages which the court classified as real, amount, according to the amended complaint, to the sum of [365]*365$1,350.90 excluding interest, which amount exceeds that which is necessary to confer jurisdiction to a district court.

Although under other section of their brief, the appellants maintain that the plaintiff has no cause of action against the defendants because the action exercised has a personal character, and the wrong-doer having died, the cause of action died with him, according to the maxim actio personalis moritur cum persona. The maxim cited is exclusively of the common law, and although this Court has always tended to acknowledge to the citizen the full benefit of both juridical systems — the Common Law and the Civil Law —until we create one which contains the best and most just of both, as was said in the case of P. R. Ry. L. & P. Co. v. District Court, 38 P.R.R. 305, however, we must hold that the principle embodied in the maxim — which we may say in passing is completely discredited in the common law jurisdiction — has never prevailed in the Civil Law, nor can it prevail because it is incompatible with the fundamental principle which holds that the heir is the continuation of the juridical personality of the deceased. The personal action which arose in favor of Sosa against Juan Morales Diaz was not extinguished with the death of the latter, who by legal fiction is still alive, as far as his rights and duties, in the persons of his heirs. To that effect, Section 610 and 603 of the Civil Code provide:

“Section 610.- — -Heirs succeed the deceased in all his rights and obligations by the mere fact of his death.
“Section 603. — The rights to the succession of a person are transmitted from the moment of his death.”

See also the case of P. R. Ry. L. & P. Co. v. District Court, supra, those of Pérez v. Succrs. of M. Pérez & Co., 41 P.R.R. 844, and Gastón v. Heirs of Franceschi, 43 P.R.R. 285. We grant that there are certain very personal rights which die together with the person, such as usufruct, use and habitation, and the life estate which the deceased was enjoying. [366]*366patria potestas, guardianship, etc., but those very personal rights die together with the person, not because the aforesaid maxim is applicable, but because of the limitation contained in the nature of the rights themselves.

The appellants complain that the lower court denied their oral motion wherein they requested that the action be adjudged prescribed. Without it being understood that we sanction the incorrect practice of alleging defenses orally in proceedings before courts of record, as are the district courts, we must state that the lower court applied the law correctly in deciding that the term for the limitation of this class of actions begins to run when the judgment which decides the case in favor of the defendant is final or when the attachment which has been levied is annulled. From that moment and not before, the cause of action arises. See the recent case of Martí v. Hernández, 57 P.R.R. ___. From March 11, 1935, when the judgment which ended the suit in favor of the defendant, plaintiff herein, until July 11 of the same year, when the original complaint in this suit was filed, the term of one year established by the law for the exercise of damage actions had not elapsed.

The appellants maintain that the lower court had no authority to allow the amendment to the complaint so as to include new defendants who did not appear in the original complaint and to correct the error which had taken place in alleging that Randolfo Morales, who had been sued as an heir, was also the judicial administrator of the estate, when in fact the administratrix was the widow Alejandrina Asencio, who from the first also appears as a defendant in her capacity as heir.

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