Goldberg v. List

This action was instituted by the plaintiff, a conditional vendee of certain personal property consisting of trade fixtures and restaurant equipment, worth $2,500, covered by several conditional sales contracts, for damages for the conversion of said property by defendants, strangers to said conditional sales contracts. At the time of said conversion, the vendee was in arrears in the payment of instalments due upon said property, and subsequent to said conversion, the property, upon the demand of the conditional vendors, was turned over to them by the defendants. Judgment was entered in favor of the defendants upon a finding that plaintiff had suffered no damage by reason of said conversion. An appeal is taken by plaintiff from the judgment against him on the judgment roll alone, and the question, therefore, presented is whether or not the findings of the trial court will support the judgment.

The findings show that plaintiff, as lessee of two of the defendants, List and Stevenson, was in possession of a certain storeroom located in a building, part of which was used as a hotel. The court found that while plaintiff was in possession and occupation of said premises, but after he had ceased operating the restaurant business, the defendants “without cause, wrongfully, forcibly, unlawfully, wilfully and maliciously entered upon and took possession of said demised premises, together with the fixtures and equipment therein contained, against the will and without the consent of plaintiff . . . and converted said personal property to their own use ...” The trial court further found that “after the conversion of said personal property by the defendants, and their refusal to return said property to plaintiff upon demand, said defendants delivered, upon demand of the vendors thereof, said personal property then being purchased by plaintiff on conditional sales contracts to the various persons from whom plaintiff had purchased same under said conditional sales contract”, and that “by virtue of the plaintiff being in arrears in his payments under said conditional sales contracts, the demand for the possession thereof by the vendors, and the return by said defendants of said personal property to said vendors, plaintiff did not suffer any damages by reason of the conversion of the personal property by said defendants”.

We cannot agree with this contention. In the first place, we are of the opinion that section 3337 of the Civil Code does not preclude proof of the return of the property to the vendors in mitigation of the damage suffered by a conditional vendee. While it is true that the conditional vendee herein did not give his express consent to the application of the property herein to his benefit, nevertheless, at the time the condi

Moreover, an analysis of the authorities which support the rule that a recovery of the full value of the property converted may be had by a person having only a limited or qualified interest therein, indicates that the underlying reason and basis for such recovery is the fact that the party having the limited or qualified interest is liable over to the owner of the remaining interest, and in order to be adequately compensated must receive sufficient compensation not only to compensate himself for his own loss but to satisfy the demands of such owner. The California cases of California Cured Fruit Assn. v. Ainsworth, supra, Treadwell v. Davis, supra, Thompson v. Toland, supra, and Booth v. Peoples Finance etc. Co., supra, all support, either by direct language to that effect, or from an examination of their facts, this theory. That this is the true basis for the permitting of the recovery of the full value of the property converted by one owning a qualified interest is demonstrated by the fact that when the action is against the owner of the general interest, the owner of a qualified interest can only recover for the value of such limited interest, in order “to avoid circuity of action”. (California Cured Fruit Assn. v.

The rights and liabilities of the parties to a conditional sales contract are controlled by the terms of the particular contract under which they are bound. Some of such contracts contain provisions for continued liability after the retaking of possession of the property by the vendor. If so, the vendee therein should be permitted to recover against the converter of the personal property to the extent to which the vendee continues liable to the conditional sales vendor. However, in the instant ease, the appeal has been taken on the judgment roll alone, and it is the rule especially applicable to such an appeal, that “findings of the trial court are to receive such a construction as will uphold rather than defeat its judgments thereon, and whenever, from the facts found by it, other facts may be inferred which will support the judgment, such inference will be deemed to have been made”. (Anglo-California Trust Co. v. Oakland Rys., 193 Cal. 451 , 460 [ 225 Pac. 452 ].) The contracts are not before us, and we must assume in support of the judgment that they contained no provision for continued liability on the part of the vendee after the retaking of possession of the property by the conditional sales vendor.

The finding of the trial court to the effect that the vendee suffered no damage likewise compels the conclusion that the qualified or limited interest of the vendee in the personal property at the time of its conversion was of no value. This conclusion is necessarily predicated upon the inference that the conditional sales vendee paid nothing down on the purchase price and had made no instalment payments whatever under any of the conditional sales contracts. If this be so, the limited interest of the vendee had no monetary

The judgment is affirmed.

Shenk, J., Waste, C. J., Seawell, J., and Langdon, J., concurred.

Rehearing denied.