Home Port Rentals, Inc. v. Moore

• Decision Date: 19 April 2004
• Docket Number: No. 3779.,3779.
• Citation: 597 S.E.2d 810,359 S.C. 230
• Court: South Carolina Court of Appeals
• Parties: HOME PORT RENTALS, INC., Appellant, v. Roger MOORE, Respondent.

359 S.C. 230

597 S.E.2d 810

HOME PORT RENTALS, INC., Appellant, v. Roger MOORE, Respondent.

No. 3779.

Court of Appeals of South Carolina.

Heard December 10, 2003.

Decided April 19, 2004.

Rehearing Denied June 25, 2004.

M. Dawes Cooke, Jr., and Phillip S. Ferderigos, both of Charleston, for Appellant.

Thomas W. Bunch, II, and L. Jefferson Davis, IV, both of Columbia, for Respondent.

KITTREDGE, J.:

Home Port Rentals, Inc. brought this declaratory judgment action in July 2000 against Roger Moore, seeking to determine the enforceability of a March 20, 1989 judgment. The circuit court granted Moore's motion for summary judgment, finding the judgment was more than ten years old and no longer enforceable. We affirm and hold that the ten-year enforcement period for execution on judgments as provided in S.C.Code Ann. § 15-39-30 (Supp.2003), once commenced, is absolute and not subject to tolling. Such a judgment is "utterly extinguished" ten years from the date of its entry.

FACTS

Home Port obtained a judgment against Moore on March 20, 1989, in the United States District Court of South Carolina. During portions of the ten-year period following entry of the March 20, 1989 judgment, Home Port undertook efforts to locate Moore. These sporadic efforts were unsuccessful until Moore was located in Bossier City, Louisiana, in January of 1999. Home Port then filed an action on March 17, 1999 to register the judgment in the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana. Home Port filed the present declaratory action in the circuit court on July 14, 2000, seeking a determination of its ability to enforce the judgment in South Carolina after the expiration of the ten-year statutory enforcement period. Moore answered, asserting the judgment was no longer valid as the ten-year enforcement period had expired.

The parties filed cross-motions for summary judgment, claiming the only issue for the court to decide was whether the ten-year enforcement period was tolled while Moore was absent from South Carolina. The circuit court granted Moore's motion for summary judgment, finding the ten-year time for enforcement was absolute and not tolled during the period of Moore's absence from South Carolina.

LAW/ANALYSIS

Home Port asserts the circuit court erred in granting summary judgment to Moore. Home Port argues that while S.C.Code Ann. § 15-39-30 places a ten-year statute of limitations on the execution of a judgment, S.C.Code Ann. § 15-3-30 (Supp.2003) should operate to toll the expiration of the enforcement period. We disagree and find summary judgment was warranted as the judgment was extinguished ten years from March 20, 1989, the date of its entry.

We begin our analysis with the March 20, 1989 judgment that Home Port obtained against Moore in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina. South Carolina has adopted the Uniform Enforcement of Foreign Judgments Act (UEFJA), which is codified at S.C.Code Ann. § 15-35-900 et seq. (1976). Pursuant to section 15-35-910(1), a "`[f]oreign [j]udgment' means a judgment, decree, or order of a court of the United States ... which is entitled to full faith and credit...." The 1989 federal court judgment is a "foreign judgment." UEFJA is consistent with the federal statute governing enforcement of judgments rendered in federal courts. 28 U.S.C.A. § 1962 provides in part:

Every judgment rendered by a district court within a State shall be a lien on the property located in such State in the same manner, to the same extent and under the same conditions as a judgment of a court of general jurisdiction in such State, and shall cease to be a lien in the same manner and time.

(emphasis added).

Federal law thus incorporates the law of the applicable State in determining the effective date of the judgment lien, as well as its expiration. In this regard, Home Port acknowledges that a "judgment creditor ... [has] ten years from entry of a `foreign judgment' of a United States District Court of South Carolina to enroll such judgment in a South Carolina county.... Thus, the judgment in question is in practical effect a South Carolina judgment, even though it is, paradoxically, a `foreign judgment' under UEFJA." In essence, as mandated by federal law, the judgment rendered in the United States District Court for the District of South Carolina on March 20, 1989 became a South Carolina judgment for enforcement purposes on the same date. We must therefore resort to South Carolina law, section 15-39-30 of the South Carolina Code (Supp.2003), to determine the extent, if any, of Home Port's continuing right to execute on this judgment in South Carolina.¹ "A judgment represents a judicial declaration that a judgment debtor is personally indebted to a judgment creditor for a sum of money." Wells v. Sutton, 299 S.C. 19, 22, 382 S.E.2d 14, 16 (Ct.App.1989) (citing Ducker v. Standard Supply Co., Inc., 280 S.C. 157, 311 S.E.2d 728 (1984)). Pursuant to section 15-39-30:

Executions may issue upon final judgments or decrees at any time within ten years from the date of the original entry thereof and shall have active energy during such period, without any renewal or renewals thereof, and this whether any return may or may not have been made during such period on such executions.

The South Carolina Supreme Court has concluded that a judgment is "utterly extinguish[ed] ... after the expiration of ten years from the date of entry." Hardee v. Lynch, 212 S.C. 6, 17, 46 S.E.2d 179, 183 (1948); see also Garrison v. Owens, 258 S.C. 442, 446-47, 189 S.E.2d 31, 33 (1972) (stating that "[a] judgment lien is purely statutory[;] its duration as fixed by the legislature may not be prolonged by the courts and the bringing of an action to enforce the lien will not preserve it beyond the time fixed by the statute, if such time expires before the action is tried.").

In Wells, 299 S.C. at 22, 382 S.E.2d at 16, this court stated:

Executions may be issued within ten years from the date of the original entry of the judgment. "The execution is [the] only process to enforce the judgment, and it cannot have active energy unless the underlying judgment has a lien." The South Carolina Supreme Court has indicated a judgment is utterly extinguished after the expiration of ten years from the date of entry.

(citations omitted). In its conclusion, this court held:

[T]his court emphasizes it does not condone efforts by judgment debtors to secrete assets to avoid payment of judgments.... The reason for our holding is simply our recognition of the public policy of this State as expressed in the statutes to limit the life of judgments to ten years. A judgment creditor should recognize this policy and proceed expeditiously to conclude his efforts to collect his judgment within the ten year period.

Id.

Home Port contends the enforcement period should be tolled at some undefined point prior to its expiration while Moore was absent from South Carolina. According to Home Port, section 15-3-30 provides for tolling here. Specifically, section 15-3-30 provides as follows:

If when a cause of action shall accrue against any person he shall be out of the State, such action may be commenced within the terms in this chapter respectively limited after the return of such person into this State. And if, after such cause of action shall have accrued, such person shall depart from and reside out of this State or remain continuously absent therefrom for the space of one year or more, the time of his absence shall not be deemed or taken as any part of the time limited for the commencement of such action.

Home Port cites Commercial Credit Loans, Inc. v. Riddle, 334 S.C. 176, 512 S.E.2d 123 (Ct.App.1999), arguing it establishes that the ten-year enforcement period may be interrupted and tolled if a party can demonstrate that the judgment debtor was out of the state and unavailable. We reject Home Port's reading of Commercial Credit. Commercial Credit obtained a default judgment in Illinois on May 27, 1986 and subsequently brought an action in South Carolina to domesticate the foreign judgment. The judgment was enrolled in the Book of Abstracts for Newberry County on February 21, 1989. The dispute in Commercial Credit focused on determining the commencement date of the enforcement period in South Carolina in accordance with section 15-39-30. In the trial court, the special referee found the commencement of the South Carolina enforcement period related back to the date of entry of the judgment in Illinois, a position which this court rejected:

Our state courts have held that a judgment is extinguished ten years from the date of entry. The institution of an action to domesticate a foreign judgment specifically contemplates that a South Carolina judgment will be issued by a South Carolina court. At that point, pursuant to section 15-35-810, this South Carolina judgment may then be abstracted and

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