Court Opinion

ID: 9538531
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:37:29.366638+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:57.066719
License: Public Domain

McCOMB, J., Dissenting.
From a judgment in favor of plaintiff after trial before the court without a jury in an action to recover possession of personal property or its reasonable value, defendants Hamburger and Mandell appeal.
The essential facts are these:
Plaintiff and her husband gave up their home, and prior to leaving the city, plaintiff’s husband with her consent stored the furniture formerly in their home with a storage company. The same day the furniture was stored, the husband without plaintiff’s consent sold it to defendants, who in turn disposed of the furniture prior to the commencement of the present action. Plaintiff and her husband separated the day the furniture was stored and have not lived together since.
This is the sole question necessary to be determined:

Is furniture stored in a warehouse, furniture “of the home” within the meaning of section 172 of the Civil Code, when the parties in fact are not maintaining a homef

This question must be answered in the negative. Section 172 of the Civil Code reads in part as follows:
“The husband has the management and control of the community personal property, with like absolute power of disposition, other than testamentary, as he has of his sepa*186rate estate; provided, however, that he cannot make a gift of such community personal property, or dispose of the same without a valuable consideration, or sell, convey, or encumber the fiirniture, furnishings, or fittings of the home . . . without the written consent of the wife.” (Italics added.)
From a reading of the code section just set forth, it is clear that the legislature intended to prevent the sale of furniture and fittings of a home without the wife’s written consent. It is equally evident in the instant case that the furniture disposed of by the husband was not furniture of the home for the reason that the parties did not have a home at the time the furniture was disposed of. Therefore, it was not necessary for plaintiff to consent in writing to the disposition thereof by the husband, and the judgment in favor of the wife against defendants for the value of the furniture which they had purchased and disposed of was error.
For the foregoing reasons in my opinion the judgment appealed from should be reversed.
A petition by appellants to have the cause heard in the Supreme Court, after judgment in the District Court of Appeal, was denied by the Supreme Court on February 15, 1940.