Commercial Credit Co. of Baltimore v. Vineis

• Decision Date: 06 April 1923
• Citation: 120 A. 417
• Parties: COMMERCIAL CREDIT CO. OF BALTIMORE v. VINEIS.
• Court: New Jersey Supreme Court

120 A. 417

COMMERCIAL CREDIT CO. OF BALTIMORE

v. VINEIS.

Supreme Court of New Jersey.

April 6, 1923.

Appeal from District Court of Paterson.

Action by the Commercial Credit Company of Baltimore against Frank Vineis. Judgment for defendant, and plaintiff appeals. Reversed.

Argued by consent before MINTURN, J.

Abraham I. Feltman, of Paterson, for appellant.

Nathan Rablnowitz, of Paterson, for appellee.

MINTURN, J. The Hartmeier-Riger Company, a corporation of New Jersey, sold to the Ausonia Drug Company a Ford car under a conditional bill of sale dated May 11, 1922. The owner company on the same day made an assignment of its interest in the bill of sale to the plaintiff, a commercial credit company. The Ausonia Drug Company defaulted in the payment of the third installment due upon the contract of sale. Neither the bill of sale nor the assignment thereof was recorded, and thereby was furnished the occasion for this suit, and its incidental difficulties.

The Ausonia Drug Company was a tenant of one Botta, and, the company having failed to pay its rent, Botta distrained upon the goods and chattels of the drug company, including the Ford car. At the sale under the distress proceedings the defendant bought the car, and in this conjunction of circumstances we are confronted with the remarkable and unusual spectacle of a Ford car in actual distress, from the legal mire of which disaster the plaintiff by this action in replevin seeks to extricate the vehicle. The defendant insists that he is an innocent purchaser under a levy by a creditor, and that he is thereby protected in his purchase by the terms of the Uniform Conditional Sales Act (P. L. 1919, p. 461). The district court so held, and hence the appeal.

The reasoning of the earlier ajudications concerning this question as applied to the act of 1898 (P. L. 1898, p. 699) would seem to militate against the conclusion of the defendant and the district court. Reischman v. Masker, 69 N. J. Law, 353, 55 Atl. 301; Levinson v. Godfrey, 79 N. J. Law, 212, 74 Atl. 278.

In the latter case this court declared:

"The appellant cannot bring himself within any of the statutory classes, in whose interest the recording of a bill of conditional sale is made necessary in order to be valid, * * * for it is manifest from the record that at the time of trial of this claim the plaintiff in attachment was not a judgment creditor."

The distinction made by the act of 1898 as pointed out by the court was that one might be a creditor, but not a judgment or attaching creditor, and therefore was not within the legal scope of the terms of the recording act. The pertinent portion of the act of 1919 is that in the situation contemplated by the act such sale shall be "void as to any purchaser from or creditor of the buyer, who, without notice of such provision [i. e., reserving property in the seller after possession of goods is delivered to the buyer], purchases the goods or acquires by...