Ucci v. Mancini

387 A.2d 1056, 120 R.I. 352, 1978 R.I. LEXIS 674
CourtSupreme Court of Rhode Island
DecidedJune 27, 1978
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 387 A.2d 1056 (Ucci v. Mancini) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Rhode Island primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Ucci v. Mancini, 387 A.2d 1056, 120 R.I. 352, 1978 R.I. LEXIS 674 (R.I. 1978).

Opinion

Kelleher, J.

This appeal marks but another chapter in what appears to be a never-ending controversy between Filomena Ucci and James Mancini regarding a parcel of land located in Warwick on the northerly side of Occupasstuxet Road. On September 29, 1964, Mancini1 leased the property to Filomena’s late husband, Louis, who then proceeded to operate a fruit and produce stand at this location. The lease called for a monthly rental of $175 and gave Louis’ administrators and assigns an option to purchase the parcel at any time subsequent to July 1, 1968. Louis died in November 1965, and Filomena, as the administratrix of her husband’s estate, continued to operate the business. In 1968, when Filomena tendered the April rent, it was refused. Later, in May 1968, she was notified by Mancini that the lease was terminated and was told to vacate the premises on or before June 1, 1968. At that time Filomena had failed to comply with a lease provision requiring the procurement of a public liability insurance policy which would protect Mancini. She did not vacate the premises, and on August 19, 1968, she notified Mancini that she was exercising her option to purchase; thereafter the parties became immersed in litigation.

[354]*354On January 30, 1969, Filomena instituted a civil action in the Superior Court in which she sought specific performance of the option. At the same time she filed a petition in which she described her unsuccessful attempts to pay the monthly rent to Mancini and reported that during one such attempt he had threatened her physical well-being. Consequently, Filomena asked that she be permitted to deposit all future rental payments, as well as those Mancini refused, into the registry of the court. An ex parte order was issued permitting her to do this. The registry records indicate that Filomena continued to make rental payments into the registry up to November 1972. The total amount of rent deposited with the clerk amounts to some $11,000, including interest.

Mancini filed an answer, denying all of the material allegations of Filomena’s complaint, and a counterclaim, seeking a decree forfeiting the lease and the option as well as a claim for the rent “stipulated under the lease for the period April 1968 to August 1969, inclusive * * *.”

We first became aware of the Ucci-Mancini imbroglio when, in September 1971, Filomena took an appeal from a Superior Court order directing her to pay to Mancini a share of an increase in the real estate taxes assessed against the parcel. The lease provided that the lessee would pay a proportionate share of any real estate tax assessed during the period of occupancy. On May 23, 1972, we entered an order dismissing the appeal pro forma but, in attempting to assuage Filomena’s fear that her contribution would never reach the tax collector, directed the trial justice to amend his order so that Filomena’s share would be paid to Mancini’s attorney, who, in turn, would pay it to the municipality. Ucci v. Mancini, 110 R.I. 909, 290 A.2d 616 (1972).

Subseqently, following a 2-day hearing in November 1972, a Superior Court justice granted the prayer for specific performance and denied Mancini’s counterclaim. Mancini appealed.

[355]*355When Mancini’s appeal came on to be heard, a four-man court divided equally and affirmed the trial justice’s judgment. Ucci v. Mancini, 113 R.I. 261, 320 A.2d 334 (1974). Later, we granted Mancini’s motion to reargue before a full court. Ucci v. Mancini, 113 R.I. 929, 320 A.2d 334 (1974). After reargument we discovered that the record had been prematurely certified to us because the controversy concerned multiple claims and there had been no compliance with Super. R. Civ. P. 54(b). The record was returned to the Superior Court, where a new and properly certified judgment was entered on June 12, 1975.

A month or so later we issued an opinion in Ucci v. Mancini, 115 R.I. 182, 344 A.2d 367 (1975), where a majority of this court found that Filomena’s exercise of the option was a nullity because on August 19, 1968, she was not holding under the lease. The majority was of the opinion that Filomena, having breached the lease and having failed to vacate the premises as directed, was either a trespasser or a tenant at sufferance at the time she purported to exercise the option. The judgment entered in the Superior Court was vacated, and the case was remanded with “a direction to enter judgment for the defendants.” Following the receipt of the record in the case, the clerk of the Superior Court’s Kent County division entered a printed form of judgment which, in its pertinent portion, reads: “[T]he plaintiff take nothing,” and “the action be dismissed on the merits.”

Later, in October 1975, Mancini filed a motion to amend, in which he asked to file a “supplemental counterclaim” in which he sought to recover $11,200 allegedly due “for rental and a reasonable amount for use and occupancy of said real estate from April of 1968 to July of 1975.” The record became further clouded when in early November 1975 a judgment was entered at the order of the justice who had presided at the jury-waived trial. That judgment describes the travel of the case from its inception through the trial, the appeal, and our remand and, in its relevant part, reads as follows:

[356]*356“ 1. The Judgment of this Court granting the Plaintiffs Prayer for specific performance is hereby vacated.
“2. Judgment is hereby entered in favor of the Defendants.”

Mancini’s supplemental counterclaim motion was heard during mid-February 1976 before a justice other than the one who had presided at the 1972 trial. After listening to arguments both pro and con and considering supporting memo-randa, the motion justice filed a written decision in which he found for Filomena and against Mancini. Mancini then instituted this appeal.

The motion justice, after referring to the facts detailed in Ucci v. Mancini, 115 R.I. 182, 344 A.2d 367, and the holding of the majority in that case, expressed the belief that the only result effectuated by that holding was a vacating of the trial justice’s order that Mancini sell the property to Filomena. The motion justice stressed that we had issued no directive regarding the trial justice’s denial of Mancini’s counterclaim for damages. Accordingly, he characterized Mancini’s supplemental counterclaim motion as an afford to revive his claim for damages and ruled that such a motion could not be entertained after the entry of final judgment.

Having ruled that Mancini’s motion was a nullity, the motion justice judiciously observed that the time had come to terminate this litigation. With this goal in mind, he decided to treat Mancini’s motion and Filomena’s objection thereto as two separate petitions, in which each petitioner laid claim to the $11,000-plus on deposit in the court’s registry. The motion justice then applied the doctrine of res judicata to Mancini’s petition by ruling that the question of damages could have and should have been litigated at trial.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
387 A.2d 1056, 120 R.I. 352, 1978 R.I. LEXIS 674, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/ucci-v-mancini-ri-1978.