Court Opinion

ID: 9847286
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 03:57:13.916281+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:06.129542
License: Public Domain

BIRD, C. J., Concurring and Dissenting.
I agree with the majority that an unconditional right of redemption exists for most wilfully defaulting vendees under security device installment land sale contracts.
However, there is no reason to deny the right of redemption to vendees whose payments prior to default amount to less than “a substantial part of the purchase price.” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 106.) This court has under certain circumstances treated substantial partial payment as a prerequisite to relief from forfeiture. However, the substantial partial payment requirement has been applied only where the relief granted to the defaulting vendee was not redemption but reinstatement of the contract upon payment of delinquent amounts. (See, e.g., Barkis v. Scott (1949) 34 Cal.2d 116, 118, 122 [208 P.2d 367]; see also Cross v. Mayo (1914) 167 Cal. 594, 596, 605 [140 P. 283].)
By contrast, proof of substantial partial payment has not been held to be a prerequisite to redemption, in which the vendee pays the full balance of the purchase price in exchange for immediate conveyance of title. (Keller v. Lewis (1878) 53 Cal. 113, 118; see also Kornblum v. Arthurs (1908) 154 Cal. 246, 249 [97 P. 420]; cf. Odd Fellows’ Sav. Bank v. Brander (1899) 124 Cal. 255 [56 P. 1109] [defaulting vendee who had paid only 6 percent of purchase price held entitled to right of redemption].)
*118The sole possible exception is MacFadden v. Walker (1971) 5 Cal.3d 809 [97 Cal.Rptr. 537, 488 P.2d 1353, 55 A.L.R.3d 1], In MacFadden, this court held that a wilfully defaulting vendee who had deposited with the court the full balance of the purchase price plus interest had a right to specific performance. In other words, the vendee had a right of redemption. Like the vendee in Barkis, supra, 34 Cal.2d 116, the vendee in MacFadden had paid approximately half the purchase price before defaulting. Unlike the vendee in Barkis, the vendee in MacFadden did not seek to reinstate the schedule of installment payments, but instead offered to pay off the entire contract.
MacFadden quoted at length from Barkis, in which substantial part payment was held to be a prerequisite to reinstatement. (MacFadden, supra, 5 Cal.3d at p. 814.) Without discussing the differences between reinstatement and redemption, the court opined that the fact that the vendee had previously paid a substantial part of the purchase price assured that the rest of the purchase price would be paid if the vendee were granted specific performance. (Id., at p. 815.)
This assurance was clearly not essential to the holding. As in this case, the vendee had deposited with the court the full balance of the purchase price with interest. (Id., at p. 812.) No further assurance of payment was necessary. Thus, MacFadden does not stand for the proposition that substantial partial payment is a prerequisite to redemption.
A requirement of substantial partial payment is not only unnecessary as a matter of stare decisis, it is also practically unnecessary to protect the vendor’s interest. As the majority acknowledge, “ ‘the legal title is retained by the vendor as security for the balance of the purchase money, and if the vendor obtains his money and interest he gets all he expected when he entered into the contract.’” (Maj. opn., ante, at p. 114, quoting Keller v. Lewis, supra, 53 Cal. at p. 118; see also maj. opn., ante, at p. 111.) That statement holds true whether or not a substantial part of the purchase price has previously been paid.
The majority also fail to discuss the cogent arguments raised by Professor Hetland, who appeared as amicus curiae for plaintiffs. Professor Hetland argues that the installment land sale contract, when employed as a security device, is the functional equivalent of a mortgage or deed of trust and should generally be subject to the same rules. This view has much to recommend it.
*119Treating the installment land sale contract as the equivalent of a mortgage under Civil Code section 29241 would bring the procedures for foreclosure of the vendee’s equity of redemption into line with those permitted for foreclosure under a mortgage or deed of trust. (See Civ. Code, § 2924 [private foreclosure sale]; Code Civ. Proc., § 700.010 et seq. [judicial foreclosure sale].) Moreover, the vendee, like a mortgagor or trustor under a deed of trust, would not be restricted to an equity of redemption, i.e., the right to conveyance of title only upon payment of the full amount of the debt. The vendee would also be entitled to reinstatement of the contract upon payment of any delinquent amounts. (See Civ. Code, § 2924c.)2
*120It may be argued that equating installment land sale contracts with mortgages would disappoint the expectations of vendors who relied on existing law when they elected to provide for secured financing via an installment land contract rather than a promissory note and deed of trust or mortgage. In addition to giving the vendee a right to reinstate, bringing installment land contracts within the scope of Civil Code section 2924 would deprive vendors of the power they currently enjoy to extinguish the vendee’s interest in the security through an action to quiet title or by other means of strict foreclosure. Vendors would be confined to the relatively slow and cumbersome remedy of judicial foreclosure sale (Code Civ. Proc., § 726) or, if provided by contract, the more convenient remedy of a private sale under the rules governing private sales on default under a mortgage or deed of trust (Civ. Code, § 2924 et seq.).3
However, vendors have been on notice for nearly 15 years that this court was considering a change in the law which would “complete the land sale reform initiated by Barkis v. Scott, supra, 34 Cal.2d 116, and ending prematurely with MacFadden v. Walker, supra, 5 Cal.3d 809, by . . . holding that the land sale contract is a mortgage under Civil Code section 2924” (Kosloff v. Castle (1981) 115 Cal.App.3d 369, 377 [171 Cal.Rptr. 308]). For example, the 1973 edition of Witkin’s widely consulted treatise summarizing California substantive law noted that MacFadden contained “[a] broad hint of a possible judicial extension to defaulting [installment land contract] purchasers of the right of a defaulting mortgagor to cure default . ...” (3 Witkin, Summary of Cal. Law (8th ed. 1973) Security Transactions in Real Property, § 21, p. 1510.)
*121In MacFadden a unanimous court took note of Professor Hetland’s “persuasive arguments that installment land sale contracts should be treated as security devices substantially on a par with mortgages and deeds of trust, and that therefore ‘the law governing those security devices should be adopted with appropriate modifications in determining the remedies for breaches of installment contracts.’” (MacFadden, supra, 5 Cal.3d 809, 816, citing Honey v. Henry’s Franchise Leasing Corp. (1966) 64 Cal.2d 801, 804 [52 Cal.Rptr. 18, 415 P.2d 833]; Hetland, Cal. Real Estate Secured Transactions, supra, §§ 3.58-3.81, pp. 100-134.)
Specifically, the court observed that the law governing mortgages “affords even the wilfully defaulting debtor an opportunity to cure his default before losing his interest in the security.” (MacFadden, supra, 5 Cal.3d at p. 816, italics added; see also County of Los Angeles v. Butcher (1957) 155 Cal.App.2d 744, 747 [318 P.2d 838] [“it is clear that where parties enter into a written contract for the purchase and sale of real property pursuant to which the . . . seller retains the legal title as security for the purchase price, the [seller] ‘has no greater rights than he would possess if he had conveyed the land and taken back a mortgage’ ”].)
The predominant use of installment land sale contracts has been to finance the purchase of housing by low income families and individuals unable to qualify for conventional mortgage financing or government loan guarantee programs. (See Note, Reforming the Vendor’s Remedies for Breach of Installment Land Sale Contracts, supra, 47 So.Cal.L.Rev. at pp. 193-198.)
Providing installment contract vendees the same protections that are afforded to mortgagors would eliminate some abusive practices of vendors, who have exploited the lack of legal sophistication and limited capacity to litigate of their low-income clients. (See id., at pp. 197, fn. 36, 205-206, 211.) Most important, defaulting vendees would be able to avoid the loss of their homes by paying only the delinquent amounts.4 Under the majority’s holding, a wilfully defaulting vendee may avoid this fate only by paying the outstanding balance in full. This is an unjustifiably harsh burden to place on the low-income and middle-income families and individuals who will be most affected.

Section 2924 provides in part that “Every transfer of an interest in property, other than in trust, made only as a security for the performance of another act, is to be deemed a mortgage . . . .” In an installment land sale contract, the vendor retains title to the property as a means of securing the vendee’s obligation to pay. Thus, the vendee makes no “transfer” of a property interest to the vendor, and the contract does not fall literally within the terms of section 2924.
However, it has long been recognized that an installment land sale contract is “an imperfect or equitable mortgage, . . . [properly] treated as if it had the similitude of a mortgage, subject to foreclosure in the same way a mortgage is foreclosed.” (Gessner v. Palmateer (1891) 89 Cal. 89, 92 [26 P. 789].) This court has also held that a borrower’s written promise not to transfer or encumber real property, given as security for repayment of a loan, creates an equitable mortgage (Coast Bank v. Minderhout (1964) 61 Cal.2d 311, 313-315 [38 Cal.Rptr. 505, 392 P.2d 265]), even though no transfer of an interest in real property from the borrower to the lender occurs.
Similarly, a deed conveying land and reserving to the vendor a lien to secure payment of the purchase price has been held to create an equitable mortgage. (Dingley v. Bank of Ventura (1881) 57 Cal. 467, 470-471.) As in Coast Bank, the transaction at issue in Dingley did not include a transfer of an interest in land from the vendee to the vendor. The vendor in Dingley argued that the creation of a mortgage required such a transfer, relying on Civil Code section 2924. (Id., at p. 468.) This argument was unavailing. “A court of equity looks through the form to the substance of the matter before it, and where, as here, it finds a contract in the deed of conveyance securing to the vendor a lien on the land sold for the unpaid purchase-price, it treats it as, what it is substantially, a mortgage.” (Dingley, supra, 57 Cal. at p. 472.)
In Bank of Italy etc. Assn. v. Bentley (1933) 217 Cal. 644 [20 P.2d 940], the trustee under a deed of trust argued that it was not required to exhaust the security before suing on the personal obligation, since the statute requiring exhaustion of the security referred only to mortgages and not to deeds of trust. (Id., at p. 653.) That argument was rejected for reasons which are applicable to this case. “Fundamentally, it cannot be doubted that in both situations the security for an indebtedness is the important and essential thing in the whole transaction. The economic function of the two instruments would seem to be identical. Where there is one and the same object to be accomplished, important rights and duties of the parties should not be made to depend on the more or less accidental form of the security.” (Id., at pp. 657-658.)
As the authors of a leading treatise in the field have commented, “[t]he entire question of the vendor-vendee relationship would be better served if the courts would, once and for all, clearly establish that the security land sale contract shall be governed by California statutory law relating to mortgages and deeds of trust.” (1 Miller & Starr, Current Law of Cal. Real Estate (rev. ed. 1975) pt. 2, § 5:31, p. 170, fn. 8.)

Section 2924c, subdivision (a)(1) provides in part that “[w]henever all or a portion of the principal sum of any obligation secured by deed of trust or mortgage on real property . . . has, prior to the maturity date fixed in such obligation, become due or been declared due by reason of default in payment of interest or of any installment of principal, . . . the *120trustor or mortgagor ... at any time within three months of the recording of the notice of default under such deed of trust or mortgage, if the power of sale therein is to be exercised, or, otherwise at any time prior to entry of the decree of foreclosure, may pay to the beneficiary or the mortgagee ... the entire amount then due under the terms of such deed of trust or mortgage and the obligation secured thereby (including reasonable costs and expenses . . . which are actually incurred in enforcing the terms of such obligation, deed of trust or mortgage, and trustee’s or attorney’s fees . . .), other than such portion of principal as would not then he due had no default occurred, and thereby cure the default . . . and ... all proceedings theretofore had or instituted shall be dismissed or discontinued and the obligation and deed of trust or mortgage shall be reinstated and shall be and remain in force and effect, the same as if no such acceleration had occurred.” (Italics added.)

As recently as 1970, private power of sale clauses were rarely included in land sale contracts. (See Hetland, Cal. Real Estate Secured Transactions (Cont.Ed.Bar 1970) § 3.80, pp. 132-134; Note, Reforming the Vendor’s Remedies for Breach of Installment Land Sale Contracts (1973) 47 So.Cal.L.Rev. 191, 212.) If that were still the case, the burden on vendors might be substantial. However, by the end of the 1970s, “[p]ower-of-sale clauses [were] beginning to appear in installment land sale contracts, with the same formality and elaboration which accompanies their inclusion in deeds of trust and mortgages. ...” (Bernhardt et al., Cal. Mortgage and Deed of Trust Practice (Cont.Ed.Bar 1979) § 6.5, p. 260.) The trend toward inclusion of power-of-sale clauses may have been a response to indications in this court’s opinions that a judicial equation of installment land sale contracts with mortgages was on the horizon. (See post, pp. 120-121.)

Before a vendee may reinstate the contract in this manner, however, he or she must also pay the vendor’s reasonable costs and the trustee’s or the attorney’s fees. (See Civ. Code, § 2924c, subd. (a)(1).) Thus, even if there were more than one wilful default, the vendor would be fully protected.