Court Opinion

ID: 9566760
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:42:50.028053+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:39:23.283691
License: Public Domain

Eberhardt, Presiding Judge,
dissenting. "If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” — Thoreau. I must dissent. Forfeitures are abhorred both at law and in equity. Cobbs Land Co. v. Colonial Hill Co., 157 Ga. 236, 253 (121 SE 395). Rather, both delight to do justice, and that not by halves. Tallman v. Varick, 5 Barb. (N. Y.) 277, 280. Long ago in the case of Heard v. Sill, 26 Ga. 302, 309, Mr. Justice Lumpkin asserted: "After all, where lies the justice of the case? I try always to dig deep for that; and when found, nothing but the most imperious legal necessity can restrain me from administering it.”
Where lies justice here? On November 14,1969, Quality Finance Company made a cash loan to Gray and took his promissory note, repayable in monthly instalments, the first payment falling due December 15,1969-and the last November 15,1971. By a fortuitous circumstance November 14, 1971, two years from the date of making the loan, fell on Sunday and the last payment was, for that reason, made to fall due on November 15. Technically, perhaps, this runs the loan for one day beyond the two-year limitation of Code Ann. § 25-315, but as I see it this does not bring about a violation of the Act, and certainly not one that justifies a forfeiture.
As Judge Deen points out in his dissent, it was not legally possible for the debtor to make the last payment due on Sunday, for the lender could not lawfully open its place of business to receive payment. Code Ann. § 26-9908. The lender could not on that date, have enforced collection of the note or foreclosed its security bill of sale on the borrower’s automobile. "Sunday is dies non juridicus, and service can not be made, or legal notice given on that day, or the business or work of ordinary callings done.” Sawyer v. Cargile, 72 Ga. 290. Trover can not be instituted on Sunday. Chafin *765v. Tumlin, 20 Ga. App. 433 (93 SE 50). It is in recognition of this that the Uniform Commercial Code provides that all commercial paper falling due on a Sunday or a holiday shall be due on the next succeeding business day for both parties. Code Ann. § 109 A-3 — 503 (3). Do we make so gross a distinction whether the note is due by law or by contract on the same date so that the latter results in forfeiture?
The borrower has defaulted in the payment of substantially the entire loan, but the majority, refusing to give the recognition which the law does to the practicalities of an obligation maturing on Sunday, proclaims a forfeiture of the whole of the loan, because, forsooth, the debtor is to be afforded an extra day in which to meet his obligation! "It is not what a lawyer tells me I may do; but what humanity, reason, and justice, tell me I ought to do.” — Edmund Burke, on Conciliation with America.
If the two-year period had ended on Monday and the note had been repayable on Tuesday, the result reached by the majority would be a tenable one, for the extension of the due date because of Sunday would not have been involved. I do not find the situation to be comparable to that which obtains when a cause of action is barred by a statute of limitation, for in that situation the plaintiff has been entitled to bring an action to enforce his claim on any day of the period, whether two, four, six or twenty years, while here the plaintiff was at no time prior to November 14, and because it was a Sunday, until November 15, entitled to proceed. The situations are simply not comparable.
I would affirm, for the drumbeat that I hear demands it.