Succession of Danneel

152 So. 2d 29, 244 La. 303, 1963 La. LEXIS 2346
CourtSupreme Court of Louisiana
DecidedMarch 25, 1963
DocketNo. 46378
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 152 So. 2d 29 (Succession of Danneel) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Louisiana primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Succession of Danneel, 152 So. 2d 29, 244 La. 303, 1963 La. LEXIS 2346 (La. 1963).

Opinion

HAWTHORNE, Justice.

Mrs. Grace Zelie Darineel, widow of Dr. George W. Rembert, died on February 7, 1959, and the Whitney National Bank of New Orleans qualified as testamentary executor. On June 10, 1960, the executor in these succession proceedings filed a tableau of distribution, styled by it “first provisional account”, listing certain debts which it proposed to pay including a proposed payment to Dr. Robert Bernhard, Sr., of $5420.00 for professional services rendered to the decedent. Dr. Bernard filed opposition to this tableau, contending that he was a creditor of the decedent for professional services in the sum of $7100.00 and should be paid this amount, and that the account should be amended accordingly. Before the filing of this tableau Dr. Bernhard had presented to the executor his first itemized statement of the charges for professional services rendered to the decedent from July 22, 1953, to February 7, 1959. In listing Dr. Bern-hard as a creditor for $5420.00 the executor took the position that $1680.00 of the $7100.00 claimed had prescribed.1

The district court dismissed Dr. Bern-hard’s opposition and approved and homolo-gated the tableau as filed by the executor. The Court of Appeal, Fourth Circuit, amended the judgment of the district court by increasing the award to Dr. Bernhard from $5420.00 to $5430.00 and affirmed the judgment in all other respects.2 See La. App., 144 So.2d 664. On application of Dr. Bernhard this court granted a writ of cer-tiorari.

The pertinent facts here involved are set •out in the opinion of the Court of Appeal, and it is necessary for us to give only a. brief summary of them. On March 20, 1958, about a year before Mrs. Rembert’s death, she was adjudged an interdict, and on September 17, 1958, about six months after her interdiction, the Whitney National Bank was appointed as her curator and duly qualified. The curator on January 29, 1959, filed what it styled its “first provisional account” setting out the bills to be paid, which was approved and homologated by the district judge on the same day it was filed. Dr. Bernhard, relator, was placed on this account for the full amount of his claim, $7100.00, but before any of these claims were paid, the interdict, Mrs. Rem-bert, died leaving a solvent estate.

Her testamentary executor, Whitney National Bank, filed its first tableau of distribution on June 10, 1960, on which the executor listed a proposed payment to Dr. Bernhard, as stated previously, of $5420.00, on the theory that $1680.00 of his itemized bill for $7100.00 had prescribed. The executor conceded that prescription running on this account was interrupted by the filing of the provisional account in the curator-ship on January 29, 1959, and proposed to pay all items charged to the decedent for a period of three years prior to this date amounting to $5380.00, plus additional charges of $40.00 incurred after this date and before the decedent’s death, or a total of $5420.00.

The Court of Appeal was correct in holding that the filing of the provisional account by the curator interrupted prescription running on Dr. Bernhard’s bill, La.Civ. Code Art. 3520, and that the filing of this account could only interrupt the running of prescription and could not operate to waive accrued prescription. La.Civ.Code Art. 354; see Succession of Driscoll, 125 La. 287, 51 So. 200; Succession of Romero, 31 La.Ann. 721,

[31]*31We granted writs in this case so that we might determine whether the pronouncement by this court, first made in In re Phoenix Building & Homestead Ass’n, 203 La. 565, 14 So.2d 447, and repeated in Liquidation of Canal Bank & Trust Co., 211 La. 803, 30 So.2d 841, that judgments homologating accounts are final and have the authority of the thing adjudged, had any application here in view of the homologation by the court of the curator’s provisional account on which Dr. Bernhard was listed as a creditor for $7100.00.

Our study of the codal provisions and the jurisprudence leads us to conclude that the judgment homologating this curator’s account could not have the force of the thing adjudged.

Article 356, found in the Civil Code in Book I, Title VIII, “Of Minors, Of Their Tutorship And Emancipation”,3 requires:

“The tutor is bound to render an annual account of his administration, reckoning from the day of his appointment. This account shall be rendered contradictorily with the undertutor.

“The judgment homologating the account shall be prima facie evidence of the correctness of the account homologated, in any settlement which may afterwards be made with the minor. * * * ”4

In the early case of Jarreau v. Ludeling, 12 Mart.O.S. 106, a suit by a minor against a tutor for the balance of his estate in which the creditors of the tutor intervened to reduce the amount owed to the minor by the tutor, the court had this to say:

“The provision of the law, that requires that the tutor’s account be rendered before the judge, is clearly introduced for the ex-elusive advantage of the minor. No other person can have any interest in it.

“If the tutor has creditors who imagine that he colludes with the minor to remove his property from their reach, they are not prevented from shewing this, by the absence of an account rendered before the judge. Such an account, as it would be made without their being called to contradict it, would not stand in their way; and we cannot see of what use it would be to them. Had it been rendered, it would be open to all their objections. * * * ”

In Schneider v. Burns, 45 La.Ann. 875, 13 So. 175, the court in discussing a tutor’s account which had been duly homologated stated:

“In the first place the account which is rendered by a tutor pending the tutorship, and which may be homologated contradictorily with the undertutor, is not a final judgment, and does not definitively fix the situation or condition of affairs even up to the date at which it is rendered. It is at best only prima facie correct, and is subject to be reopened by the minor when he becomes of age, and is subject to amendment or correction to the full extent of error.

******

“The first error in plaintiff’s position is in ascribing to a provisional account homologated during the tutorship the effect of determining absolutely the relative position of tutor and ward at any given fixed period.”

In Succession of Burbank, 132 La. 521, 61 So. 557, in discussing a tutor’s account this court said:

“The account was filed under article 356 of the Civil Code as an annual account. It [32]*32was approved by the undertutor. An annual account, under the article cited, need not be advertised. The account is not final. Illegalities or excessive charges do not bind the ward. The annual account is a record and reminder of the amounts collected and the amounts expended. It is only prima facie correct.”

The homologated provisional account of the curator in the instant case was not one even required by the Code, but was apparently an effort by the curator to discharge its duty under the eye of the court. It was not rendered contradictorily with anyone. It was made without notice to anyone, without proof, and without a hearing, and at most could only be prima facie correct. It certainly cannot be considered a thing adjudged. La.Civ.Code Art. 2286. What was said in Succession of Lampton, 35 La.Ann.

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152 So. 2d 29, 244 La. 303, 1963 La. LEXIS 2346, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/succession-of-danneel-la-1963.