Thomas v. Young

71 So. 2d 368, 1954 La. App. LEXIS 543
CourtLouisiana Court of Appeal
DecidedMarch 22, 1954
DocketNo. 3824
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 71 So. 2d 368 (Thomas v. Young) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Louisiana Court of Appeal primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Thomas v. Young, 71 So. 2d 368, 1954 La. App. LEXIS 543 (La. Ct. App. 1954).

Opinion

ELLIS, Judge.

Plaintiff as the judgment creditor of the defendant sought to garnishee the latter’s employer, Gaylord Container Corporation, which duly answered and set forth that there were two wage assignments. The pertinent part of the garnishee’s answer is as follows:

“Answering Interrogatory No. 4, respondent says:
“Tyree Young is employed by respondent. His rate of pay is One and 43/100 ($1.43) Dollars per hour, working ordinarily forty (40) hours per week.
“Heretofore there has been deducted weekly from wages accruing to Tyree Young the following:
“(a) Under assignment and deduction authority executed by Tyree Young unto and in favor of First State Bank & Trust Company, Bogalusa, Louisiana, there has been deducted the sum of Fifteen and no/100 ($15.00) Dollars from his weekly wage toward paying an indebtedness, the unpaid bal■ance of which is the sum of Four Plun-dred Fourteen arid 09/100 ($414.09) Dollars.
“(b) By assignment and deduction authority executed by Tyree Young, [370]*370there has been deducted from his weekly wage and paid over to the Employees’ Federal Credit Union the sum of Sixteen and no/100 ($16.00) Dollars toward a debt on which there is an unpaid balance of Five Hundred Thirty-four and no/100 ($534.00) Dollars.
“(c) There is deducted, as required by law, the F.I.C.A. tax each week of approximately eighty-six (86‡) Cents.”

The garnishee accordingly prayed that the relative rank of the wage assignments and deduction authority and the wages of Tyree Young subject to seizure under the law of Louisiana be adjudicated upon.

The District Court ruled that these assignments primed the garnishment of plaintiff and rendered judgment to that effect, from which plaintiff has perfected a sus-pensive appeal.

Counsel for plaintiff contends that the statutory law applicable to “Garnishment of Wages, Salaries and Commissions” which is set forth in LSA-R.S. 13 :3921 et seq., and Article 644 of the Code of Practice clearly' indicates that the only exemption is the 80% with $60 monthly minimum provided in the Code of Practice, supra, and further indicates that only prior judgments, prior writs of garnishment, and indebtedness to an employer prime a writ of garnishment. He argues that as no mention is made of an assignment priming a writ of garnishment, to allow such is therefore inconsistent with our theory of the law that a secured .creditor prevails over an unsecured creditor.

He. further argues that as a general proposition of law a wage assignment should not be allowed to take priority and preference over a garnishment as such action is open to collusion on the part of the employee who is being garnisheed. Further, that an employee who anticipated that he was going to be garnisheed could give a wage assignment so large in size that it would mean that a general creditor would not be able to garnishee him for years. Counsel for plaintiff then cites the well-settled law of our state that a judgment creditor acquires a privilege on the property seized which entitles him to a preference over other creditors by the mere act of his seizure of the property, citing Milliken & Farwell v. Taft Mercantile Co., 7 La.App. 150, and therefore contends that to rule as did the District Court in this case would mean that a creditor who has a privilege must yield in priority to a creditor who has no privilege. He further submits that the only conclusion which can be reached after an examination of the statutes of our state pertinent to the law of garnishments is that it was the intention of the law makers that the only individual who could possibly take priority and preference over a judgment creditor insofar as the garnishment of the wages of a judgment debtor is concerned is the employer to whom the employee was indebted prior to the issuance of the garnishment as set forth in LSA-R.S. 13:3925.

In view of the fact that no other exception was made in the law and no other priority over a judgment creditor was granted by the law makers in a garnishment proceeding, it is counsel’s further contention that it was. the specific intention of the law makers to grant a priority in a garnishment proceeding only to an employer and to no one else.

Should we confine ourselves to the authorities used by learned counsel for plaintiff as a basis for his apparently logical arguments, we would perhaps be forced to agree, however, that there is other law pertinent and applicable to the situation which must be considered and which definitely deals with assignments against future wages. There is no question raised or contention made that one can not under the law of Louisiana assign his wages as was done in the present case. Such an assignment is recognized by our law and jurisprudence.

Strudwick Funeral Home, Inc., v. Liberty Industrial Life Ins. Co., Inc., La.App., 176 So. 679, 680, dealt with an alleged assignment of the proceeds of an insurance policy and the court in dealing generally with the assignment stated:

[371]*371“The defendant insists that the foregoing is merely a request upon it to pay the proceeds of the policy to the plaintiff, and does not constitute a valid assignment as contemplated by Articles 2642 and 2643 of the Civil Code. Article 2642 provides: ‘In the transfer of credits, rights or claims to a third person, the delivery takes place between transferrer and tránsferree by the giving of the title.’ • (Italics ours.)
“Article 2643 teads:
“‘The tránsferree is'only possessed, as it regards third persons, after notice has been given to the debtor of the transfer having taken place; '
“ ‘The tránsferree may nevertheless become possessed by the acceptance of the transfer by the debtor in an authentic act.’
“In view of the foregoing articles, the question is whether the above-quoted order is sufficient to exhibit a transfer of title from Octavia Roy to the plaintiff. It is the uniform jurisprudence of this state, and also of the common law, that, in the absence of statute, no special form of words or language is required to constitute a valid assignment, and that ‘any language, however informal, if it shows the intention of the owner of the property or chose in action■ to transfer it and sufficiently identifies the subject-matter, will be sufficient to vest the property therein in the assignee.’ (Italics ours.) See Vol. 6, C.J.S., Assignments, § 52, page 1096.
“Likewise, under Article 2643 of the Civil Code, the debtor is entitled to notice of the assignment and, while it is held that no particular form of notice is necessary, it is essential that the notice given be such as to inform him that his former creditor has divested himself of all of his (creditor’s) rights to the thing assigned. See Gillett v. Landis, 17 La. 470; Succession of Delassize, 8 Rob. 259; Charles F. Johnson & Co. v. Boice & Frellsen, 40 La.Ann. 273, 276, 4 So. 163, 8 Am.St.Rep. 528, and Adams, Brown & Co. v. L. Feibleman & Co., La.App., 152 So. 693.”

In American Jurisprudence, Vol. 4, Sec. 41 under “Assignments — :E. Salaries and Wages — Generally”, it is stated:

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71 So. 2d 368, 1954 La. App. LEXIS 543, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/thomas-v-young-lactapp-1954.