Tri-Lake of Louisiana, LLC v. Couteau Plateau LLC

59 So. 3d 491, 10 La.App. 3 Cir. 1384, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 287, 2011 WL 832502
Louisiana Court of Appeal·Decided March 9, 2011·No. No. 10-1384·Published·Cited by 1 cases

Opinion

AMY, Judge.

hThe plaintiffs filed suit seeking the return of the purchase price of a mobile [492] home. The defendant alleged that the underlying contract was valid and that the risk of loss for the destruction of the mobile home fell on the purchaser. After trial, the trial court entered judgment in favor of the plaintiffs and awarded the purchase price of the mobile home. The defendant appeals. For the following reasons, we affirm.

Factual and Procedural Background

The defendant, Couteau Plateau, LLC, owns a camp in Cameron Parish. According to Frank Sadler, a manager/member of Couteau Plateau, the camp was destroyed by Hurricane Rita in 2006. Sadler testified that he arranged for the purchase of a mobile home to be used as a temporary camp while the permanent structure was being rebuilt. In the summer of 2008, Couteau Plateau decided to sell the mobile home.

Tri-Lake of Louisiana, LLC and Wilson LeJeune, plaintiffs, were interested in purchasing a mobile home. LeJeune is a manager/member of Tri-Lake. LeJeune testified that, after he viewed the mobile home, Tri-Lake agreed to purchase it. The parties signed the bill of sale and the title on August 22, 2008 and LeJeune tendered twenty-five thousand dollars as the purchase price. LeJeune testified that he attempted to have the mobile home titled in Tri-Lake’s name on August 26, 2008. According to his testimony, he learned that, in addition to other defects, significant taxes were owed on the defendant’s original purchase of the mobile home.

LeJeune alleges that he contacted Sad-ler about the outstanding taxes and the parties disputed whether or not taxes were owed on the purchase. According to Sad-ler, he offered LeJeune a refund of the purchase price and LeJeune refused. According to LeJeune, the matter was left “up in the air.” Sadler then left the country 1 j>on September 8, 2008 for an extended vacation. Before Sadler returned, Hurricane Ike made landfall on September 12, 2008, and the mobile home was destroyed by its flood waters.

The plaintiffs filed suit, seeking the return of the purchase price due to a mutual mistake in the price. After a trial, the trial court entered judgment in the plaintiffs’ favor and awarded the contract price to the plaintiffs. The defendant appeals, asserting the following assignments of error:

No. 1 — The trial court erred in failing to acknowledge when LeJeune refused Sadler’s offer of a full refund the day after the sale, LeJeune waived his right to demand a refund once the mobile home was destroyed.
No. 2 — The trial court erred in failing to find there was a valid sale.
No. 3 — The trial court erred in failing to find the risk of loss had transferred to LeJeune at the time the mobile home was destroyed.
No. 4 — The trial court erred in failing to find LeJeune’s negligence in failing to timely move the mobile home to a safe haven was the legal cause of its destruction.
No. 5 — Finally, the trial court erred in failing to find no sales tax was owed in connection with the original purchase of the mobile home by Sadler due to the fact that prior to trial Sadler had filed the required Act of Immobilization thereby exempting the mobile home from sales taxes in connection with Sadler’s original purchase.

Discussion

Three of the defendant’s assignments of error are predicated on the assumption that the trial court erred in finding that there was no contract. Before turning to those assignments, we address whether [493] the trial court erred in finding that there was no contract, which the defendant raises in his second assignment. -

IsSafes Taxes

Relevant to the determination of whether or not a contract existed is the defendant’s last assignment of error — that the trial court erred in failing to find that no sales tax was owed because of a late-filed “Act of Immobilization.” Upon the filing of an Act of Immobilization, a mobile home ceases to be subject to the taxes due upon movables and becomes subject to the taxes due on immovable property. La.R.S. 9:1149.4. After Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, the legislature allowed retroactive filing of an Act of Immobilization for mobile homes purchased in certain parishes between September 1, 2005 and December 1, 2006. La.R.S. 9:1149.4(C). The Act of Immobilization filed in this case reflects that it was filed in the Cameron Parish records on July 31, 2009.

The defendant argues that the trial court erred in finding that, because the Act of Immobilization could have been filed at any time, no outstanding taxes were owed on the mobile home. The defendant argues that, therefore, the taxes were a “non-issue” in this case. We find the defendant’s argument unpersuasive. At the time of the sale, the Act of Immobilization had not been filed. Taxes on the sale of a mobile home are due and owing until the Act of Immobilization is filed. La.R.S. 9:1149.4(B). Thus, at the time of the purported sale, taxes were still owed on the mobile home. Although the Act of Immobilization could have been filed retroactively, it was not filed prior to the destruction of the mobile home. In fact, it was not filed until after the instant suit was filed — almost a year after the destruction of the mobile home. Further, the responsibility to file the Act of Immobilization fell to the defendant, not the plaintiffs. See Gibbs Constr. Co., Inc. v. Thomas, 500 So.2d 764 (La.1987) (wherein the supreme court found that a subcontractor could not rely |4on his own failure to deliver a required letter of credit to defeat his obligations under a contract). Therefore, we find that the trial court did not err in failing to find that no taxes were owed.

This assignment of error is without merit.

Mutual Error or Mistake

The defendant alleges that the trial court erred in finding that no valid contract for sale existed.

The requirements for a valid sale are addressed in La.Civ.Code art. 2439, which states that: “Sale is a contract whereby a person transfers ownership of a thing to another for a price in money. The thing, the price, and the consent of the parties are requirements for the perfection of a sale.”

Louisiana Civil Code Article 1948 provides that consent may be vitiated by error, fraud, or duress. In order to vitiate consent, the error must concern a cause without which the obligation would not have been incurred and must have been known or should have been known to the other party. La.Civ.Code art.1949.

Error may concern a cause when it bears on the nature of the contract, or the thing that is the contractual object or a substantial quality of that thing, or the person or the qualities of the other party, or the law, or any other circumstance that the parties regarded, or should in good faith have regarded, as a cause of the obligation.

La.Civ.Code art.1950.

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Tri-Lake of Louisiana, LLC v. Couteau Plateau LLC, 59 So. 3d 491, 10 La.App. 3 Cir. 1384, 2011 La. App. LEXIS 287, 2011 WL 832502 (La. Ct. App. 2011).

59 So. 3d 491 (Tri-Lake of Louisiana, LLC v. Couteau Plateau LLC) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

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