Auffant v. Succession of Ramos
Auffant v. Succession of Ramos
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
Pedro Anffant, on January 14,1915, brought a suit against Victor Sallaberry for the recovery of a sum of money and attached a piece of real estate to secure the effectiveness of the judgment. Before that'time, however, namely, in 1912, the Succession of Manuel de J. Eamos had obtained a judgment against the same debtor and, while the proceedings' in the. suit of Auffant were still pending, obtained an order of execution and the marshal of the Municipal Court of Yauco attached or seized the same property. All these proceedings took place in the Municipal Court of Yauco.
Auffant, claiming to have a prior lien or encumbrance on the land, applied to the District Court of Ponce for an injunction to restrain the said Succession of Eamos from executing the said judgment on the said land while the suit of Auffant was still pending. The District Court of Ponce .rendered a judgment not exactly in the terms prayed in the injunction but restraining the defendants from taking any ¡steps in execution of the judgment in favor of the said Suc■cession of Eamos.
The first error assigned by the appellant is that there is no authority in the district court to issue a permanent 'injunction as the object of the suit was not for such permanent injunction and the injunction sought was not an ancillary remedy to some principal suit.
We think that section 3 of the law of March 8, 1906, and Especially subdivision 1, contemplates relief by injunction ■either incidentally to some other suit or directly by complaint brought for that purpose. The complaint must, under subdivision 1, be for a limited period or perpetual. In this case the order restrained the defendants for no fixed period and the relief would be apt to be turned into a perpetual one if the complainant had a right to injunction and the court had authority to grant it.
It should further be noticed that the judgment in this case, on any reasonable theory of the complaint, went too far. It paralyzed the execution of the judgment of the Succession of Eamos. A creditor has a right to execute his judg
Reversed.
A motion for reconsideration having been filed, on March 29, 1916,
delivered the following opinion of the court:
A motion for reconsideration is filed in this case. We do not see how the fact that this court referred erroneously to the Municipal Court of Tauco instead of the Municipal Court of Ponce has any bearing on the questions involved. The appellee maintains that the opinion was mistaken in saying that the District Court of Ponce rendered judgment not exactly in the terms sought in the complaint. It seemed to us that the District Court of' Ponce ordered the defendant Succession of Manuel de J. Ramos to refrain from executing any act in execution of the judgment obtained by them. The restraining order in this case prohibited the defendants from doing any act in execution of the judgment and especially on the particular property in question. The order appealed from ordered the defendants (translating literally) to refrain from doing, and on the property to be described further on, any act in execution of the judgment. If the idea of this order was merely to limit the defendants with regard to the particular property it was ambiguously worded and would leave a defendant in doubt as to whether he would be prima facie in contempt if he attempted any act in execution of his said judgment. The only difference between the original restraining order and the order appealed from was that the word “especially” was left out of the latter. If we were mistaken in interpreting the order it cannot affect the fact that injunction was not the proper remedy as complainant was suffering’ no prejudice.
The parties in this case made a stipulation in the court
We think that the only question submitted in such stipulation was whether, given such facts, the injunction should issue.
The appellee maintains that this court decided the main question, namely, the right of Auffant as against the rights of the Succession of J. Ramos, in favor of the defendant and appellee.
And so it seems, and exactly for this same reason, even if there were no other, we thought that the injunction did not lie, as the rights of Auffant were sufficiently protected without the necessity of recourse to a remedy by injunction.
The motion for reconsideration should be •
■ Dismissed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.