Muñoz v. Benítez Carrillo
Muñoz v. Benítez Carrillo
Opinion of the Court
delivered the opinion of the court.
Félix Benitez Rexach, one of several defendants, moved for a change of venue from the District Court of Humacao to the District Court of San Juan. Benitez Rexach was a resident of San Juan. The other defendants were residents of Humacao. The district judge overruled the motion.
The theory of the motion was that the defendants who resided in Humacao were not necessary parties, should have appeared as plaintiffs instead of defendants, and had been made defendants for the sole purpose of preventing a possible change of venue. Benitez Rexach relied on the complaint itself as sufficient evidence of the facts needed to support this theory.
When there are a number of defendants some of whom, at the commencement of the action, reside in the district where it has been brought, a change of venue will not ordinarily be granted. Section 81 Code of Civil Procedure; Nieves v. Heirs of Mangual, 31 P.R.R. 523, and Vélez v. Pacheco et al., 35 P.R.R. 602. The fraudulent joinder of a resident defendant against whom the plaintiff has no cause of action merely for the purpose of preventing the real nonresident defendant from obtaining a change of venue will not be permitted to accomplish that result. See McDonald v. California Timber Co., 151 Cal. 159 and other cases cited in Bancroft’s Code Practice, vol. II, p. 1447, section 1006. In such a case there is of course no real resident defendant.
Plaintiffs Muñoz and Quintana alleged that in April 1928, they, as sureties, and Eusebio Benitez Carrillo, as principal, had executed a certain promissory note set forth in full in
The prayer was for a judgment against defendants to the effect that plaintiffs are not obliged to pay Benitez Rexach anything by virtue of the judgment rendered in case number 15,692 prosecuted in the District Court of Humacao, and that said judgment is null and void because the former judgment was not paid in full by Benitez Rexach; and that Beni-tez Rexach and Iglesias Silva, as sureties of Benitez Carrillo, are bound to satisfy the judgment in the action brought by the bank against Benitez Carrillo, Muñoz and Quintana.
It was Iglesias Silva, who equally with Benitez Rexach, was responsible for the dissolution of the attachment and loss of the attached property of the insolvent debtor, Beni-tez Carrillo, in the action brought by the bank against the said Benitez Carrillo and his sureties, plaintiffs herein. It was Iglesias Silva who paid one half of the judgment obtained by the bank and then, together with Benitez Rexach, brought an action against plaintiffs herein to recover the entire amount of that judgment. Apparently it was Iglesias Silva who thus enabled Benitez Rexach to obtain a judgment against plaintiffs herein for the full amount of the judgment alleged to have been purchased by Benitez Rexach and Igle-sias Silva from the bank. It was Iglesias Silva who as ostensible purchaser and owner of a one half interest in the bank’s judgment assigned the same, December 20, 1930, to Muñoz, one of the plaintiffs herein. It is the full amount of this judgment which Benitez Rexach is now seeking to recover from plaintiffs herein.
Benitez Rexach is seeking to enforce against plaintiffs a judgment obtained by him in an action brought against plaintiffs not by himself alone but by him and Iglesias Silva.. Just how he alone obtained in that action a judgment for the full amount claimed by him and Iglesias Silva does not appear. The inference is that in the course of the action he
Appellant in his brief is content to say that if the defendants, Iglesias Silva and Benitez Carrillo, have any interest at all in the case such interest is united with that of plaintiffs and that these defendants should have been joined as plaintiffs. The facts set forth in the complaint furnish no satisfactory basis for this conclusion. If plaintiffs herein, instead of Iglesias Silva and Benitez Rexach, had been compelled to pay the bank’s judgment, they would have had a good cause of action against Iglesias Silva and Benitez Carrillo as well as against Benitez Rexach to recover from them the amount so paid. Barring any question of res judicata, and assuming the ability of plaintiffs to prove the averments of their complaint, we see no reason why the responsibility of all three defendants, as between themselves and plaintiffs-herein, should not be determined in the present action. The
What we have said disposes of the question of bad faith or fraudulent intent to anticipate and prevent a possible change of venue. We may add in passing, however, that plaintiffs, in opposing’ the motion for a change of venue, called the attention of the district judge to the fact that Iglesias Silva had appeared in the action and submitted himself to the jurisdiction of the Humacao court. The notice of appeal was addressed to counsel for the defendant Iglesias Silva, as well as to counsel for plaintiffs and was served on counsel for Iglesias Silva as well as on counsel for plaintiffs.
The order appealed from must be affirmed.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.