The Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company v. Lura Virginia Bickel Lee Carter

446 F.2d 136
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
DecidedOctober 12, 1971
Docket29435_1
StatusPublished
Cited by24 cases

This text of 446 F.2d 136 (The Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company v. Lura Virginia Bickel Lee Carter) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
The Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company v. Lura Virginia Bickel Lee Carter, 446 F.2d 136 (5th Cir. 1971).

Opinions

LEWIS R. MORGAN, Circuit Judge:

We originally decided this appeal on April 7, 1971, Slip Opinion No. 29,435. However, upon further consideration, we have decided to grant the government’s petition for rehearing and withdraw our initial decision. The following opinion is substituted in lieu thereof:

In this three-party contest, the mortgagor seeks to set aside the entire foreclosure sale while the United States, the second mortgagee, argues that its lien should come before the claim for attorneys’ fees provided for in the first mortgage held by Connecticut Mutual Life Insurance Company. The district court held the second mortgage lien inferior to Connecticut Mutual’s lien for attorneys’ fees and confirmed the foreclosure sale despite the mortgagor’s objections.

In January of 1962 Lura Virginia Bic-kel Lee Carter (mortgagor) mortgaged her Florida citrus farm property to Con[138]*138necticut Mutual Life Insurance Company pursuant to an agreement which contained the standard provision for payment of attorneys’ fees1 by the mortgagor in the event of default on the underlying promissory note. A hard freeze occurred during the winter of 1962 severely damaging the mortgagor’s citrus trees. Consequently, in July of 1963 the Farmers Home Administration (FHA), a branch of the federal government that extends agricultural credit when the need for such arises from a natural disaster, began lending the mortgagor sums of money secured by a second mortgage which also contained a provision for payment of attorneys’ fees, and specifically stated that the second lien was subject to the mortgage held by Connecticut Mutual.2

When the mortgagor failed to meet the payments on the first mortgage, Connecticut Mutual initiated a foreclosure suit in the Florida state court in April, 1969. The action was removed to federal district court3 where the trial judge granted foreclosure, and held that the mortgagor owed Connecticut Mutual $418,111.49 in principal and accrued interest and $11,500 as reasonable attorneys’ fees. After the ensuing sale, at which the sole bidder, Connecticut Mutual, purchased the property for the approximate amount of the total indebtedness due it, the court held that, contrary to the contentions advanced by the government, the first mortgage lien for attorneys’ fees was superior to the FHA second mortgage lien.

The court overruled without an adversary hearing the mortgagor’s objections to the fairness of the sale.

The single disputed issue between the FHA and Connecticut Mutual involves the priority of the lien for attorneys’ fees contained in the first mortgage. FHA contends its second mortgage is superior to Connecticut Mutual’s lien for attorneys’ fees because the amount of attorneys’ fees was not choate (specific and certain) when the FHA mortgage attached in July of 1963. For authority, FHA relies principally upon three Supreme Court cases — United States v. Equitable Life Assurance Society of United States, 1966, 384 U.S. 323, 86 S.Ct. 1561, 16 L.Ed.2d 593; United States v. Pioneer American Insurance Co., 1963, 374 U.S. 84, 83 S.Ct. 1651, 10 L.Ed.2d 770; United States v. New Britain, Connecticut, 1953, 347 U.S. 81, 74 S.Ct. 367, 98 L.Ed. 520 — which hold that under the well-known rule of “fifst in time, first in right” a federal tax lien is superior to all other liens not choate at the time the federal tax lien is filed.

FHA quite correctly points out that the choate lien test, although originating in the tax lien field, has been extended to give federally-held mortgages [139]*139priority over certain unrecorded liens which were admittedly superior under state law. United States v. Roessling, 5 Cir., 1960, 280 F.2d 933; United States v. Oswald and Hess, 3 Cir., 1965, 345 F.2d 886; United States v. County of Iowa, 7 Cir., 1961, 295 F.2d 257. However, our research reveals no decision which would elevate a government mortgage to a position of superiority under the facts of the present case where the FHA, operating as a private lender, voluntarily took a second mortgage fully aware (see footnote 2, supra) of the then existent attorneys’ fees clause in the first mortgage. Thus, finding an absence of binding legal precedent, we proceed to a consideration of whether congressional intent commands priority of the government’s security interest in the instant set of circumstances.

As previously noted, the choate lien test, contended for by the government, emanated from three Supreme Court eases, supra, all of which were decided before the passage of the Federal Tax Lien Act of 1966 (P.L. 89-719, 80 Stat. 1125), amending 26 U.S.C. § 6323. The amendment substantially altered the priorities of federal tax liens so that a lien for attorneys’ fees if valid under local law is no longer subordinate to a subsequently-filed federal tax lien.4 Although the 1966 amendment does not of itself affect the priority of the claims here involved,5 the statute diminishes the validity of the choate lien test in the important field of taxation where the doctrine originated. It would indeed be anomalous and contrary to our view of congressional intent to allow the FHA operating as a money-lending agency to prevail in a situation where the government as holder of a tax lien would have an inferior security interest. Ault v. Harris, D. Alaska, 1968, 317 F.Supp. 373, (aff’d. and opinion adopted) Ault v. United States, 9 Cir., 1970, 432 F.2d 441; Standard Savings and Loan Association v. Evans (S. Carolina Spr. Ct., 1970), 178 S.E.2d 145. The collection of taxes is certainly more vital to the government’s existence than the making of farm loans and if Congress determines (as it has) that a federal tax lien, involuntarily imposed upon the government, is not unduly threatened by an inchoate lien for attorneys’ fees, then we see no reason to exempt a federal mortgage lien, which the government sought to obtain, from the operation of a provision for attorneys’ fees in a first mortgage. By making farm loans, FHA became subject to the same requirements of local law which govern the validity of security interests in respect to all other lenders. The district court’s order granting priority to Connecticut Mutual’s lien for attorneys’ fees over FHA’s second mortgage is therefore affirmed.

The next issue we must deal with is mortgagor Carter’s contention that the district court erred by failing to grant a hearing on her objections that the sale was unfair. Under Florida Statutes, § 702.02(5), F.S.A., the value of property sold at a foreclosure sale is conclusively presumed to be the amount bid at the sale unless objections are filed within ten days in which case “such objections shall be considered by the court”. (Emphasis supplied). After Mrs.

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