Court Opinion

ID: 9461418
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 22:14:13.86892+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:37:03.372691
License: Public Domain

ELY, Circuit Judge
(Joined by Circuit Judge BROWNING) concurring:
I concur in the majority’s opinion because, in my view, it comports with my dissenting opinions in United States v. Stadium Apartments, Inc., 425 F.2d 358, 367 (9th Cir. 1970), and Branden v. Driver, 441 F.2d 1171 (9th Cir. 1971).
In the present cases, the loans in question were made by the Small Business Administration (SBA). In Stadium Apartments, the loan was made by the Federal Housing Authority (FHA), and in Branden, by the Veterans Administration (VA). The lending documents in all the cases specified, in effect, that the loans were made subject to the laws of the states in which the real property was situated. In Stadium Apartments, supra, the majority held that Idaho’s redemption statute could not be invoked by the mortgagor upon the FHA’s foreclosure of the mortgage. In Branden, supra, the majority held that VA, the mortgagee, might take a deficiency judgment upon its foreclosure of a purchase-money mortgage on California property, despite a California statute prohibiting such a deficiency judgment. For comments generally supporting my dissenting views in those cases, see Note, Federal Courts — Choice of Controlling Law in Cases Involving Federally Insured Mortgages, 49 N.C.L.Rev. 358 (1971); Note, Property — Mortgages— State Redemption Statutes Not Applicable to Foreclosure by the United States on FHA Insured Mortgage, 23 Vand.L.Rev. 1384 (1970); Note, Federal Courts—Refusal to Apply State Redemption Statute to FHA-Insured Mortgage Foreclosure, 17 Wayne L.Rev. 178 (1971).
I respectfully submit that there is no such sufficient difference in loans made by the SBA, as in the present appeals, as to justify a more favorable treatment to the debtors than that given to the debtors in Stadium Apartments and Branden. Under United States v. Yazell, 382 U.S. 341, 86 S.Ct. 500, 15 L.Ed.2d 404 (1966), the pertinent state law should control in all four cases. It therefore seems to me that the majority, in reaching the correct result in the cases now before us, should have, in the interest of consistency, if not for the reasons expressed by me in Stadium Apartments and Branden, expressly overruled the holdings of those two cases.