Title Insurance & Trust Co. v. California Development Co.

152 P. 564, 171 Cal. 227, 1915 Cal. LEXIS 610
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedOctober 9, 1915
DocketL. A. No. 3801.
StatusPublished
Cited by10 cases

This text of 152 P. 564 (Title Insurance & Trust Co. v. California Development Co.) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering California Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Title Insurance & Trust Co. v. California Development Co., 152 P. 564, 171 Cal. 227, 1915 Cal. LEXIS 610 (Cal. 1915).

Opinion

*229 SLOSS, J.

This is an appeal by Boaz Duncan, intervener, from that portion of the decree in the above-entitled cause which gives to the holders of receiver’s certificates priority over the bonded indebtedness secured by the deed of trust sought to be foreclosed. The general facts of the case and the purport of the decree are shown in the opinion filed by us in Title Insurance & Trust Co. v. California Development Co., (L. A. 3848), ante, p. 173, [152 Pac. 542],

The action was originally begun in the superior court of Imperial County, where the complaint was filed on December 13, 1909. On the same day the court, on the ex parle application of the plaintiff, appointed W. E. Bolabird receiver. On December 22, 1909, the receiver applied to the court for and received authority to issue and sell receiver’s certificates to the amount of thirty thousand dollars. On April 6, 1910, the court authorized two further issues of receiver’s certificates, in the amounts, respectively, of two hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars and eighty thousand dollars. In each instance the order provided that the certificates should be a first lien on the property.

On January 6, 1910, the appellant, Duncan, applied for leave to intervene in the action, and on January 15, 1910, he was granted permission to file and did file his complaint in intervention. On the same day he filed a notice of intention to move for an order vacating the appointment of the receiver. One of the grounds of this motion, and the only one disclosed by the record, was the insufficiency of the bond given by the plaintiff on the appointment of the receiver, and of the bond given by the receiver for the faithful performance of his duties as such. The motion was denied on the sixth day of April, 1910. Duncan attempted to appeal from the order denying the said motion, but his appeal was dismissed by this court on the ground that the order in question was not appealable. (Title Insurance & Trust Co. v. California Development Co., 159 Cal. 484, [114 Pac. 838].) In dismissing the appeal we said that “if the appellant has any right to a review of the order complained of, it must be by means of an appeal from such final judgment as may hereafter be entered in the action.” Pursuant to this suggestion, the appellant now seeks to attack the propriety of the original order appointing the receiver. The application for the receiver was made by the plaintiff as trustee for the holders *230 of the bonds. Duncan, as a bondholder, was one of the beneficiaries of this trust. He was, therefore, represented by the plaintiff and was bound by its bona fide acts so long as he did not appear in the proceeding individually. (See Wallace v. Loomis, 97 U. S. 146, 163, [24 L. Ed. 895].) When he did so appear, he was entitled to stand upon his own rights and to take such action as he saw fit for the protection of those rights. It was his duty, however, to make timely objection to the appointment of the receiver, if he was not content to have the appointment stand. Failure to make such objection is a waiver of the right to make it. (34 Cyc. 162.) The intervener is not now entitled to present points of attack which he did not present in the court below. Having founded his motion to discharge the receiver on the solé ground that the undertakings were insufficient, he cannot, after final decree, raise in this court for the first time the objection that the complaint and the affidavit accompanying it were insufficient to authorize the appointment of a receiver, although this objection, as we have heretofore held, would have been good if not waived. (Title Insurance & Trust Co. v. California Development Co., 164 Cal. 58, [127 Pac. 502].) In his attack upon the propriety of the order appointing the receiver, the appellant is, therefore, limited to the alleged defects in the two undertakings filed; one by the plaintiff under section 566 of the Code of Civil Procedure and the other by the receiver under section 567 of the same code. The first of these bonds is given to secure to the defendant the payment of all damages which he may sustain by reason of the wrongful appointment of the receiver. It is doubtful whether the appellant here, who was not a defendant but was one of the parties represented by the plaintiff applying for the appointment of a receiver, is in any way interested in this bond. Be that as it may, it appears that before the court made its order on the appellant’s motion to discharge the receiver, the alleged defects in both undertakings were called to the attention of the court below, and the filing of new undertakings in proper form was ordered. Such undertakings were immediately filed. The defects in the original bonds were thus cured, so as to make the appointment of the receiver valid at least from the time of filing of the new undertakings. (Title Insurance & Trust Co. v. California Development Co., 164 Cal. 58, 65, [127 Pac. 502].) And, we *231 think, so far as the intervener’s rights are concerned, the proceedings were thereby validated from the beginning. No expenditures by the receiver were authorized to be made between the time when Duncan came into the ease and the time when the corrected bonds were filed.

The appellant argues that the court was without authority to make the receiver’s certificates a lien prior to that of the bonded indebtedness. We may assume that the California Development Company was a private, rather than a quasi- public, corporation. It is no doubt the general rule that in the case of such a corporation, “the court will not, as against the objection of a minority of the bondholders, issue receiver’s certificates and make them a prior lien upon the mortgaged property, for the purpose of procuring funds to continue the management and operation of the business, the power of the court to incur liabilities being limited strictly- to the necessary care and preservation of the property during the receivership.” (High on Receivers, 4th ed., sec. 312b.) The power to supersede prior liens by certificates issued for the purpose of carrying on the business of the corporation has generally been limited to the case of railroad receiverships. (Id.; 34 Cyc. 297.) But there can be no question of the right of the court to give priority to certificates issued to enable the receiver to carry out the primary object of his appointment, viz., the care and preservation of the property. The appellant argues that some, at least, of the expenditures for which leave to issue certificates was asked were designed, not to preserve the property, but to enlarge and extend the system and for other purposes. No specific part of the evidence is referred to in support of this claim. It is sufficient to say, in answer, that our own reading of the record satisfies us that there was ample evidence to justify the conclusion that all of the expenditures authorized by the court were required for the actual care and preservation of the property committed to the receiver’s custody.

Some other points made by the appellant require reference to the findings of fact, upon which the court made its final decree.

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Bluebook (online)
152 P. 564, 171 Cal. 227, 1915 Cal. LEXIS 610, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/title-insurance-trust-co-v-california-development-co-cal-1915.