Court Opinion

ID: 9777950
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 20:28:44.664772+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:33:02.711862
License: Public Domain

McDONALD, Judge,
concurring.
I concur with the result reached by the majority and I agree with much of its reasoning. However, the majority seems to suggest that it is never proper for a police officer to attend a self-help repossession and that his very presence constitutes a breach of the peace. With this I must disagree. It is one thing to hold that an officer of the law may not participate in a self-help repossession. It is quite another to say that he may never be present as a neutral observer. This is an important distinction, and I think it serves to distinguish the present situation from the case principally relied on by the majority, Stone Machinery Co. v. Kessler, 1 Wash.App. 750, 463 P.2d 651 (1970). The Kessler decision turned on the fact that the sheriff took an active role in the repossession, announcing to the debtor, “We come over to pick up this tractor.” The same decision also implicitly condones having a neutral officer stand by to prevent violence:
The words used [by the debtor] in announcing his intention, namely, “someone would get hurt,” were of such a nature as to justify the presence of a sheriff during any attempt at peaceable repossession although, as we have already held, this did not justify participation by the sheriff in the process of repossession.
463 P.2d at 656.
In the present case, I disagree with the majority’s conclusion that “the deputy *144sheriff acting under color of office ... enabled the Bank to repossess over Henderson’s objection.” On the contrary, it appears to have been Henderson’s momentary absence, when he went inside to phone his attorney, that enabled the bank’s agents to take the properly and run. The majority acknowledges that the officer’s presence in fact served to forestall actual violence between the antagonists. Since the very remedy of self-help repossession is potentially inflammatory, I would hesitate before ruling that a police officer may never be summoned — by either side — to prevent an eruption of violence.