Court Opinion

ID: 9443849
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:32:16.594815+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:37.453367
License: Public Domain

On Plaintiff-Appellant’s Petition for Rehearing.
PER CURIAM.
In its decision, January 20, 1953, a majority of this court affirmed the order below dissolving an attachment against the defendant partnership’s property because plaintiff had shown no prima facie claim that the partnership had intentionally and unjustifiably induced the DeAngelis corporation to break its contracts for the sale of tallow to plaintiff. Judge CLARK dissented on the ground that such a claim arose by virtue of the acts of DeAngelis for the partnership in selling to Adolf Gobel, Inc., the packing plant, owned by it and leased to the DeAngelis corporation, thus putting the latter corporation out of the plant. On petition for rehearing plaintiff stresses the obligation assumed by the partnership to Gobel to cause the DeAngelis corporation to be dissolved, with resulting inability to perform its executory contracts. We are all agreed, for reasons more fully developed in Judge CHASE’S opinion herewith, that this does constitute that showing of a prima facie claim which is necessary to sustain an attachment. Left, therefore, is the further question, not previously reached, whether there has been adequate showing that defendants have assigned or secreted their property with intent to defraud creditors.
Judge CHASE in his opinion sets forth in some detail the three transactions by the partnership relied on by plaintiff to satisfy this requirement. The opinion then holds that these transactions were fraudulent as to partnership creditors under N. Y. Debtor and Creditor Law § 277, McK.Consol.Laws, c. 12, and perhaps §§ 273 and 275, but that they were not such fraudulent conveyances as would justify an attachment under § 278(1) (b) of that law or under N.Y.C.P.A. § 903(3). Judge CHASE considers the latter statute controlling in interpretation of the former and the showing of an actual, as distinguished from a constructive, or other form of, intent to defraud, a requisite of the latter.
Judges SWAN and CLARK concur in Judge CHASE’S holding as to the existence of fraudulent conveyances, but do not agree with his further interpretation of the New York law. Since DeAngelis in the transactions in question was acting to benefit and protect the partnership and himself financially without necessary thought as to plaintiff’s contracts with the DeAngelis corporation, it may be assumed that an actual and active intent to defraud this plaintiff is not shown. But we think it clear that under the attachment provision of the N. Y. Debtor and Creditor Law § 278(1) (b), and the decisions applying this statute, no showing of such an intent or one beyond the statutory requirements of §§ 273, 275, or 277 is required. And we conclude further on a considered analysis of the New York precedents that the same interpretation is to be made of N.Y.C.P.A. § 903(3). A more detailed exposition of this view appears in Judge CLARK’S accompanying opinion. The order below must therefore be reversed; the attachment will continue.
Order reversed.