Hoshaw v. Lines
| Decision Date | 28 September 1911 |
| Citation | 118 P. 583,30 Okla. 67,1911 OK 325 |
| Parties | HOSHAW v. LINES. |
| Court | Oklahoma Supreme Court |
Syllabus by the Court.
In a suit in the courts of this state upon a contract made in another state, where the laws of such state have not been pleaded and proven, it will be presumed that the laws of such state are the same as the laws of this state.
A contract of conditional sale, wherein title to the property sold is retained in the seller, executed prior to statehood in Indian Territory, and sought to be enforced in the courts of this state, being valid and enforceable under the laws in force in Indian Territory without filing or recording, is valid and enforceable in this state without registration notwithstanding the putting in force of the registration laws of the territory of Oklahoma by section 2 of the Schedule to the Constitution.
Commissioners' Opinion. Division No. 2. Error from District Court, Tulsa County; L. M. Poe, Judge.
Action by L. E. Lines against Jake Hoshaw. Judgment for plaintiff and defendant brings error. Affirmed.
E Robitaille, for plaintiff in error.
H. B Talley, for defendant in error.
On February 9, 1906, the defendant in error, L. E. Lines, plaintiff below, delivered to Mose and Nancy Jefferson a piano under a conditional contract of sale, by the terms of which the title to the instrument remained in the seller. The contract was dated at Tulsa. Ind. T., and recited that the Jeffersons, to whom the instrument was sold, resided at Broken Arrow, Ind. T.; that the seller resided at Springfield, Mo.; and that payments to be made under the contract were to be made at his office in Springfield, Mo. The Jeffersons, to whom the piano was conditionally sold, did not make the payments required by the contract, and during the summer of 1907 mortgaged the piano to the plaintiff in error, defendant below, Jake Hoshaw, and later on November 12, 1907, sold and delivered it to him. This suit was brought to recover possession of the piano or its value after statehood in the district court of Tulsa county. The cause was tried to the court, a jury being waived, and it found all the issues in favor of the defendant in error from which judgment and finding this appeal is brought.
The plaintiff in error insists in his brief that his demurrer to the petition in the trial court should have been sustained for the reason that: (1) The contract sued on shows upon its face that it was a Missouri contract, and that the petition not showing that the contract sued on had ever been recorded, as, he alleges in his brief, would have been necessary under the Missouri law, it failed to state a cause of action. (2) That the contract between defendant in error and the Jeffersons was not valid as against the plaintiff in error, because it had not been filed or recorded upon the date he took a mortgage upon the property, and on the date when he finally bought the property from the Jeffersons, or at the time suit was brought. The above states substantially the contentions of plaintiff in error in the case.
With regard to the first contention, it is sufficient to say that regardless of whether or not the contract was a Missouri contract, which point it is not material to decide, the laws of that state have not been specially pleaded or proven in this action, and, in the absence of such special plea, the court had the right to assume that, even if the contract was a Missouri contract, the laws of that state were the same as those of the forum...
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