Urrutia v. Superior Court

237 P. 742, 196 Cal. 289, 1925 Cal. LEXIS 314
CourtCalifornia Supreme Court
DecidedJune 22, 1925
DocketDocket No. S.F. 11522.
StatusPublished

This text of 237 P. 742 (Urrutia v. Superior Court) 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
Urrutia v. Superior Court, 237 P. 742, 196 Cal. 289, 1925 Cal. LEXIS 314 (Cal. 1925).

Opinion

THE COURT.

This is a proceeding in mandamus to compel the Superior Court in and for the City and County of San Francisco, and Honorable Franklin A. Griffin, judge thereof, to deliver to petitioner, after a settlement of a receivers account, all moneys remaining undisposed of in the possession of said receiver instead of making an application of said moneys in partial satisfaction of a deficiency judgment; to compel the said court to discharge said receiver and to direct the latter to refrain from further interference with any of the property (subject to a certain mortgage hereinafter referred to) which is claimed by petitioner as his property. The cause is submitted upon a demurrer and answer interposed by the judge of the Superior Court, in response to the issuance of an alternative writ.

The material facts are as follows: On the fifteenth day of January, 1921, A. F. Rousseau, owner of the Kenilworth Apartments, situate in the city of San Francisco, leased the same to one Gorman for a period of five years, at a monthly rental of $1,325. As security for the faithful performance of all the covenants and conditions therein contained, including the covenant for the payment of rents, the lessee executed and delivered to the said Rousseau, lessor, a chattel mortgage on all the furniture contained in said building. On the eighteenth day of January, 1921, Rousseau mortgaged the apartments and hypothecated certain Liberty bonds of the value of $30,000 to the Banca Popolare Fugazi, as security for a loan of $100,000 made by the bank to him. The note recited that it was secured by a mortgage of even date and a pledge of bonds. Rousseau sold the real property (Kenilworth Apartments), the lease and the chattel mortgage to one Frinchaboy, who assumed payment of the mortgage and signed the original note, but the Liberty bonds were not assigned. Frinchaboy immediately assigned *291 the lease and the chattel mortgage, and also executed and delivered a second mortgage on the real property, in the sum of $50,615, to petitioner as security for a pre-existing obligation owing by him to the latter. On August 22, 1922, Frinchaboy conveyed his interest in the property to one Kurkjian, but prior to this, Banca Popolare Fugazi, the original mortgagee, assigned the mortgage and the note to one George H. McCarthy and his wife, Mabel E. McCarthy, who eventually assigned a part interest therein to the Bank of Alameda. On the fourteenth day of June, 1922, the Mc-Carthys and the bank instituted a foreclosure proceeding, making petitioner, who was a second mortgagee and also the assignee of the lease and chattel mortgage, a party defendant. The action resulted in a judgment of foreclosure and sale of the property mortgaged, and upon an appeal, perfected by petitioner, the judgment was, by the district court of appeal, affirmed. (McCarthy v. Kurkjian, 65 Cal. App. 569 [224 Pac. 1016].) Pending this appeal, the Superior Court, on the application of respondent mortgagee, ordered the appointment of a receiver to preserve the property. An application for a writ of supersedeas attacking said order made by petitioner to this court was denied on August 2, 1924. Thereafter the district court of appeal affirmed the order of the trial court appointing the receiver. (McCarthy v. Kurkjian, 69 Cal. App. 682 [232 Pac. 161].) On the twenty-eighth day of May, 1924, after a commissioner’s sale of the realty covered by the mortgage, a deficiency judgment in the sum of $9,995.23 was docketed. An application made to the Superior Court by petitioner, to vacate the said judgment for the alleged reason that it had been prematurely docketed, was denied. Thereafter the receiver filed his account with the Superior Court, and his prayer is that “the court make an order authorizing the undersigned as such receiver to pay the balance of the moneys in his hands to the plaintiffs herein, George H. McCarthy and Mabel E. McCarthy, to apply in partial satisfaction of the deficiency judgment, in their favor herein.”

In order to prevent said moneys, consisting solely of rents collected by the receiver from the “Gorman” lease, from being applied to a partial satisfaction of the said deficiency judgment in accordance with the prayer of the receiver’s *292 account, and upon information that it was the intention of the mortgagee to continue said receiver in office to collect further rents and apply the same in partial satisfaction of the judgment, petitioner initiated the present proceeding.

It is the contention of the petitioner that the receiver has impounded and is impounding certain rents issuing from the “Gorman” lease, which he intends to apply in partial satisfaction of the deficiency judgment, but that said rents are not subject to the lien of the encumbrance of said mortgage, and, therefore, should not be applied to the satisfaction of the deficiency judgment; that if the rents were at any time herein mentioned subject to the lien of said encumbrance, that either petitioner, as the assignee of the lease and chattel mortgage, has a paramount right to apply the same in liquidation of his own obligation to the exclusion of the first mortgagee, or that the latter has waived the right of so applying the rents in partial satisfaction of the deficiency judgment, inasmuch as, on the twenty-eighth day of May, 1924, he voluntarily and with full knowledge of the existence of said rents, docketed a deficiency judgment in the sum of $9,995.23, and thereby waived the lien or the security of any property which remained unexhausted at that time, citing In re Braun, 51 Cal. App. 202 [196 Pac. 499]; that unless said receiver is restrained by the intervention of the writ he will continue in office after the settlement of his account and will continue to collect and impound further accruing rents. On the other hand, it is insisted by respondent that the present ease is not a proper one for the issuance of the writ of mandamus, inasmuch as petitioner has a plain, speedy, and adequate remedy at law by way of an appeal from the order settling the account of the receiver; that the rents in the possession of the receiver are a part of the security covered by said mortgage and are available for and should be applied to a partial satisfaction of the deficiency judgment by virtue of the “law of the case” as determined by the previous decisions of the cause in the district court of appeal, supra; that the mortgagee’s right to apply the rents in satisfaction of his deficiency judgment is paramount to the right of petitioner, inasmuch as the mortgage was executed and recorded prior to the assignment of the lease to petitioner and that he has not waived the privilege of so applying the rents as *293 aforesaid, inasmuch as petitioner has precluded the application of said rents to the deficiency judgment by the perfection of an appeal from the order appointing the receiver and the execution of a stay bond.

In so far as the petition attempts to show any matter which would be material in an application for a writ of mandamus, it may be stated that it is insufficient to warrant the relief sought, inasmuch as it fails to allege such specific facts as would warrant this court in granting the extraordinary remedy of a writ of mandamus

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Related

In Re Braun
196 P. 499 (California Court of Appeal, 1921)
McCarthy v. Kurkjian
224 P. 1016 (California Court of Appeal, 1924)
McCarthy v. Kurkjian
232 P. 161 (California Court of Appeal, 1924)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
237 P. 742, 196 Cal. 289, 1925 Cal. LEXIS 314, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/urrutia-v-superior-court-cal-1925.