Worley v. Wahlquist

150 F.2d 1007, 161 A.L.R. 919, 1945 U.S. App. LEXIS 3318
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit
DecidedAugust 8, 1945
DocketNo. 12960
StatusPublished
Cited by3 cases

This text of 150 F.2d 1007 (Worley v. Wahlquist) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Worley v. Wahlquist, 150 F.2d 1007, 161 A.L.R. 919, 1945 U.S. App. LEXIS 3318 (8th Cir. 1945).

Opinion

JOHNSEN, Circuit Judge.

Appellant, a farmer in bankruptcy under section 75, sub. s, of the Bankruptcy Act, 11 U.S.C.A. § 203, sub. s, has appealed from some orders of the district court which (1) held that she had contumaciously failed to comply with the court’s rental order for 1943; (2) required her to file a complete accounting of all crops raised, rents receivable, and Government soil conservation payments to her, during that year, and to make páyment into court within 15 days of all rents due from her under the provisions of the rental order; (3) terminated her three-year stay, unless she fully complied with the accounting and payment order within the 15-day period; (4) denied her petition to redeem the property for the amount of the initial appraisal and also her further request for an “order fixing and determining the terms and amount of redemption” ; and (5) directed that, in the event of her non-compliance with the accounting and payment order and the consequent termination of her stay rights, her lands should be sold at public auction by a trustee appointed for that purpose.

The record affords no basis for appellant to contend here that it was “clearly erroneous” for the trial court to hold that she was contumaciously delinquent under the rental order. We need not enumerate all the circumstances appearing in the record and detailed in the trial court’s memorandum opinion that demonstrate her wilful refusal to recognize the court as her landlord, under section 75, subsection s(Z), 11 U.S.C.A. § 203, sub. s(Z), placing her property “in the custody and under the supervision and control of the court.” Among her perversities, she had made no rental payments whatever into court'at the time the hearing was held in December 1943, although she admittedly had harvested and sold some of the crops and had also collected soil conservation payments and other rental monies; she had mortgaged part of the rental grains without authority from the court and had kept or used the proceeds; she had purported to make outside rental settlements with some “friendly” creditors and had entered into other financial arrangements with them, the nature of which she was unwilling to reveal and as to which — to use the language of the trial court’s memorandum opinion— “she has evaded answering questions and professed lack of memory of details and generally exhibited the attitude that her relations * * * were none of the court’s or her creditors’ concern”; and she had speciously asserted on the present hearing, as a justification for her nonpayment of the rent, that the rental order was void because it allocated net rental monies from a part of the property among the lien creditors on an improper basis (a matter that obviously affected and concerned the lien creditors alone) and that she therefore was entitled utterly to ignore it and dodge all payment of rent for her year’s occupancy.

We shall not further belabor appellant’s contention on the question nor her parallel assailment of the requirement in the court’s order that she file a full accounting and make payment into court within 15 days of the sums due under the rental order, if she wished to purge herself of her contumacious delinquency. Her argument here that 15 days was not a reasonable time in which to make the accounting and payment is a mere abstraction, for the time cannot be said to be unreasonable on its face in which to make a compliance of that character and she does not attempt to point out any circumstances or considerations that might make it unreasonable in the particular situation. But if a genuine desire to comply with the court’s order has hitherto caused appellant to be disturbed over the sufficiency of the time fixed, the addi[1010]*1010tional period (more than a year) which she has now gained by the taking of this appeal has no doubt eased the strain and left her in a position to make prompt obeisance to the order.

The validity and propriety of that part of the court’s order terminating appellant’s right of stay, if she did not obey the accounting and payment order and absolve her current recalcitrances, is similarly not open to attack on the facts in the record. 11 U.S.C.A. § 203, sub. s(3) ; and compare Rafert v. Equitable Life Assur. Soc. of United States, 8 Cir., 138 F.2d 185, certiorari denied 320 U.S. 801, 64 S.Ct. 431, 88 L.Ed. 484.

Nor was it error to deny appellant’s petition to redeem for the amount of the initial appraisal. The lien creditors had filed requests for a reappraisal before she sought to complete a redemption. The statute purports to give an absolute right, on the timely request of either a creditor or the bankrupt himself, to have one reappraisal made in the proceeding or the value fixed on a hearing, before the court is required to enter any redemption order. The language used is that “upon request of any secured or unsecured creditor, or upon request of the debtor, the court shall cause a reappraisal of the debtor’s property, or in its discretion set a date for hearing, and after such hearing, fix the value of the property, in accordance with the evidence submitted, and the debtor shall then pay the value so arrived at into court” (emphasis added), if he desires to make a redemption. 11 U.S.C.A. § 203, sub. s(3) ; and compare In re Wright, 7 Cir., 126 F.2d 92, certiorari denied 317 U.S. 627, 63 S.Ct. 39, 87 L.Ed. 507. Whether any additional reappraisal or hearing to fix value should thereafter be had would seem to be wholly a matter for the court’s sound discretion on the circumstances of the particular situation.

Appellant argues that it was inequitable to deny her the right to redeem for the amount of the initial appraisal, because she intended to make such a redemption earlier and would have done so, except for the fact that the lien creditors wrongfully “refused to consent to redemption” unless she paid into court the amount of the rents due for previous years of occupancy under rental orders made in the proceeding before a formal stay-order had been entered. What the refusal of creditors “to consent to redemption” could legally or equitably have to do with the exercise of appellant’s right to redeem, we are unable to see. The statute prescribes the manner in which a redemption may be made and the exercise of that right is in no way dependent upon the consent of creditors. And, as we have indicated above, the statute does not give the right to make a redemption for the amount of the initial appraisal, if a timely reappraisal request is made, so that the court could not have granted appellant such a right against the creditors’ pending request, no matter when she might have intended or attempted to redeem.

As to the contention that the court erred in denying appellant’s request for an “order fixing and determining the terms and amount of redemption”, insofar as the argument is directed to the right to redeem for the initial appraisal, that desideratum too has been wholly refracted by what we have just said. But the general observation may be made that, on any attempt by a farmer-bankrupt to redeem, the amount for which the property can be redeemed is and can only be the amount of the governing appraisal or value fixed on a hearing, and the terms are and can only be cash.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
150 F.2d 1007, 161 A.L.R. 919, 1945 U.S. App. LEXIS 3318, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/worley-v-wahlquist-ca8-1945.