Kuenzli v. Symister
Kuenzli v. Symister
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the Court.
In a deed of October 5, 1927, Floirán Angleró and his wife acknowledged to owe Joseph Symister $336, and to secure the payment thereof they mortgaged in his favor a lot and house in Cataño. It does not appear from the record that sneh mortgage was recorded in the registry of property. Symister brought an action of debt in a municipal court against the debtors, and to secure the effectiveness of any judgment that might be rendered, he obtained an attachment of said property to cover the amount claimed, and said attachment was recorded in the registry, the property being subsequently sold in execution of the judgment and awarded to the plaintiff. In October, 1928, after said attachment had been recorded in the registry of property, another mortgage was constituted by the Angleró spouses on the same property, for $500, in favor of Arthur W. Kuenzli. While Kuenzli was
In deciding the present suit to annul said proceedings, the district court entered a judgment sustaining the second cause of action and dismissing the first, without special imposition of costs, and Kuenzli took an appeal from this judgment as to the first cause of action. .
The appellee Symister urges in his brief before us that we lack jurisdiction to decide the present appeal, as the lower court did not have jurisdiction to take cognizance of plaintiff’s suit wherein the question at issue was as to the nullity of the attachment levied by Symister in his action to recover $336; an action the jurisdiction of which belongs to the municipal court by reason of the amount in controversy; and that Kuenzli’s mortgage for $500 is not under discussion, and for that reason it does not determine the jurisdiction in this case.
The appellant has not discussed that question of jurisdiction in his brief or at the hearing of this appeal, at which he failed to appear.
In the action brought by Symister there was involved the recovery of $336 in a municipal court, but the question now in controversy, raised in the suit brought by Kuenzli, is as to whether or not the attachment levied on the property of the Angleró spouses, and recorded in the registry of property in favor of Mr. Symister, is null and void; and hence the value of the thing involved, and not the amount of the claim which gave rise to the attachment, should control the jurisdiction in
The appellant in its first ground of appeal asserts that the lower court erred in dismissing the first cause of action. He fails to explain why he has reached that conclusion or why the same is Avarranted, as he should have done in order that the nature and importance of the error assigned might become apparent. Nevertheless, we judge from the argument that the assignment is based solely on the fact that notice of the attachment of the property recorded in the registry was not served on the defendant, as required by section 9 of the Act to secure the effectiveness of judgments.
The question of whether the attachment of real property, recorded in the registry in favor of Symister, should have been notified to the Angleró spouses, the owners of the property, is one Avhich concerns only them and which they may waive, and the failure to serve such notice would not be a jurisdictional defect, but. a mere irregularity in the proceeding that can not be taken advantage of by other persons. Hence, we could, on that ground, affirm the judgment appealed from, in so far as it dismisses the first cause of action; but we shall not do so because we think that said notice was not necessary in this case, as we shall presently show.
“The attachment and order prohibiting the alienation of real property shall be recorded in the registry of property, the court notifying the defendant thereof and warning him that he cannot alienate the property attached except at public auction and after notice shall have been given to the plaintiff to be present at the sale, the proceeds of such sale to be deposited subject to the order of the court; nor can the defendant alienate, in any case, the property on which a prohibition has been decreed. The alienation of any property in contravention of the provisions of this section, shall be deemed fraudulent for all civil and penal purposes and the persons guilty of such offense shall also be punished for contempt of court.”
Reference has been made in various decisions of this Supreme Court to said section, in cases involving, not the question of the nullity of a recorded -attachment of real property predicated on the failure to notify the owner, but other questions of a different character. Thus, in Oliver v. The Registrar of Arecibo, 22 P.R.R. 659, the only holding was that an attached property can be sold without resorting to a public sale, where the prohibition to alienate the same except at public auction does not appear from the registry, which prohibition requires that the owner of the attached property be specially notified. In Rodríguez v. Dist. Court of San Juan, 31 P.R.R. 659, the question to be decided was whether when crops are attached the marshal may appoint a custodian thereof, and it was held that in the case of harvested crops the appointment of a custodian is proper, but when growing
The act containing the said section 9 provides by its section 2 that the effectiveness of the judgment shall be secured in accordance with the rules prescribed in the statute, the first two of said rules being formulated thus:
“ (a) If the obligation on which suit is brought be the delivery of a certain object or thing possessed by the defendant, or by a third person in the name of such defendant, said defendant, or third person, as the ease may be shall be prohibited from alienating or encumbering the object or thing until judgment has been rendered.
“(b) If the obligation be the payment of any sum of money, the provisional remedy shall consist of the attachment of sufficient property of the debtor to cover the amount claimed.”
For the reasons stated, the notice required by section 9 of the Act to secure the effectiveness of judgments was not necessary in this case, and the judgment appealed from must be affirmed in so far as the same did not declare the attachment of the property to be null and void.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.