Opinion ID: 436121
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: reach of vendor's privilege

Text: 35 Associates suggests that even if the contracts are held to be Louisiana contracts, a vendor's privilege should not be granted as to two of the contracts because Mitsubishi failed in its burden of proving which pipe under each contract had been paid for and which pipe had not. 5 As we understand Associates' argument, if there were ten lengths of pipe, all stamped x to indicate that they were sold under contract x, and the invoice for contract x had been half paid, Mitsubishi would not be entitled to a vendor's privilege on any of the pipe stamped with an x unless Mitsubishi could specifically identify which five lengths of pipe had been paid for and which had not. We find that contention unrealistic, particularly when one considers that partial payment cannot with certainty be said to pay for some part of a shipment in its entirety and not at all for the rest of the shipment. Much more commonly it obviously is intended to pay partially for the shipment as a whole. 36 In De La Vergne Refrigerating Machine Company, supra, the contract at issue was for two cotton presses, one of which had apparently been paid for in full, and the other of which had not been paid for. The court wrote: 37 [I]n as much as the contract was one contract for two compresses, and their erection at a stipulated price in globo for the two, upon which price $48,000 has been paid, leaving due a balance of $32,000 the vendor's privilege is considered as extending to and operative upon both presses. 38 51 La.Ann. 1733, 26 So. 455, 459 (1899). 39 In their pretrial stipulations, Mitsubishi, Clark, and Associates agreed that there were five separate stacks of pipe in Clark's possession which had been identified by numbers on the pipes. They further agreed upon which contracts related to the various pipes, and how much of the purchase price was outstanding on each invoice. We hold that the vendor's privilege for each contract extended to all of the pipe identified as purchased under that particular contract, up to the value of the amount owed, as security for the amount due on each contract.