Citicorp Person to Person Financial Center, Inc. v. Sanderson
| Decision Date | 27 October 1982 |
| Parties | CITICORP PERSON TO PERSON FINANCIAL CENTER, INC., a corporation v. James F. SANDERSON, et al. Civ. 3354. |
| Court | Alabama Court of Civil Appeals |
John Self, Hamilton, for appellant.
William H. Atkinson of Fite, Davis & Atkinson, Hamilton, for appellees.
This is a civil contempt proceeding.
The plaintiff (Citicorp) and Mr. Sanderson had done business with each other for a number of years. Citicorp purchased finance papers from Mr. Sanderson as to mobile homes sold by him. If a mobile home customer defaulted on his obligation, Citicorp would require Mr. Sanderson to repossess the unit.
In 1981, Citicorp sued Mr. Sanderson and the parties settled those two civil actions. Included in the judgment of the circuit court as to the settlement was a requirement that, when Mr. Sanderson sold a unit, he would instanter transmit the sale proceeds to Citicorp. That proviso pertained to mobile homes which had been repossessed by Mr. Sanderson and which were subsequently sold by him to other customers.
In Citicorp's petition to show cause, it was alleged that, as to two repossessed mobile homes, Mr. Sanderson had failed to deliver the sale proceeds to Citicorp contrary to the prior judgment of the trial court. After an ore tenus hearing before the circuit court, that court denied Citicorp's petition for contempt. They now appeal. We affirm.
By the terms of a written agreement and through the course of business dealings between the parties, a reserve account was established which was administered by Citicorp. A certain amount of each sum financed for Mr. Sanderson's customers was placed in this account. Citicorp could apply that account against any of Mr. Sanderson's debts to them. While Citicorp was not required to obtain Mr. Sanderson's prior consent to enter charges against his reserve account, they always called him prior to doing so and each time he granted permission to so debit that account. During the year after the settlement judgment, Citicorp had established a pattern of behavior of charging repossessed mobile homes to his reserve account when they did not promptly receive any sales proceeds therefrom.
The only witness to testify at the trial was Mr. Smith, Citicorp's area vice president. At the request of the attorneys and just prior to concluding his testimony, he made a telephone call to his office in order to obtain certain information and figures as to several items. In that telephone conversation, Mr. Smith apparently discovered for the first time, and revealed it to the trial court, that, as to the two repossessed mobile homes involved in the present controversy, the dealer's payoff for each of those units previously had been debited against Mr. Sanderson's reserve account. He did not testify as to the date of that transaction.
Mr. Smith earlier had...
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