Court Opinion

ID: 9443848
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:32:16.591948+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:37.451992
License: Public Domain

CLARK, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
A major difficulty in the case has seemed to be, not a dearth of allegations, but a superfluity which has unfortunately served to dilute or conceal the strength of plaintiff’s case. Cutting through all this mass, as well as some piddling quibbling by defendants over the contents of the record, I think the problem can be both clarified and simplified by disregarding peripheral claims in support of the attachment to concentrate upon a single dominant contention based upon facts here undisputed. That is, that Anthony DeAngelis, the dominating force in the partnership, The DeAngelis Packing Company, had the partnership cancel the lease on its important new packing plant to The DeAngelis Packing Company, Inc., a corporation he controlled, thus making it difficult or impossible for the corporation to carry out the contracts he had made for it to sell tallow to the plaintiff. These are the essential facts; they seem to me amply to justify the attachment under N.Y.C.P.A. § 903, subd. 3.
The objecting arguments, as I understand them, boil down to three: that the partnership was not responsible for Anthony’s acts, that the corporation could have performed its contracts by purchasing the tallow for resale, and that no wrongful or fraudulent intent was shown.
Perhaps it may be convenient to consider the last point first, because I rather think *125it colors the entire picture by suggesting that an aroma of possible good business judgment for the DeAngelis interests excuses the adverse consequences to the plaintiff. While the opinion does not explain the background, it appears that the DeAngelis corporation, notwithstandings its twenty-eight-million-dollar packing business in the year prior to December 1, 1950, was having financial difficulties. The partnership had recently built, on land owned by it, this modern and efficient meat processing plant, including facilities to refine and produce at least one million pounds of tallow and lard per week. So it had organized the packing corporation in 1948 and had leased the plant to it for ten years. Obviously this plant was a vitally important property of the partnership; so far as appears, this was its only fixed asset. Consequently something needed to be done to keep it productive. The means adopted was the acquisition of Adolf Gobel, Inc., and the various transfers to it recounted in the opinion.
From the DeAngelis standpoint this may have been wise business judgment and shrewd executive planning. Obviously it saved the partnership from the chances of having a white elephant on its hands in the shape of its vast new packing plant. But the point is that what may be wise business foresight to one may be intentional injury to another. What happened here, however the legal consequences may he viewed, was clearly intentional in the eyes of the law. Anthony DeAngelis knew the entire situation. When he put the DeAngelis corporation out of the new plant, he may have wanted only to benefit the partnership through the new Gobel business, but he knew of its potential effect upon the plaintiff’s contracts. Quite possibly he may have hoped that Gobel could take and perform the contracts or that he could eventually pay the loss; but actually there was a loss to the plaintiff of more than $800,000, as the opinion points out, which must be held within DeAngelis’ contemplation. Thus his act for the partnership was a direct and actionable interference with these contracts. Lamb v. S. Cheney & Son, 227 N.Y. 418, 422, 125 N.E. 817; Campbell v. Gates, 236 N.Y. 457, 460, 141 N.E. 914; The Poznan, D.C.S.D.N.Y., 276 F. 418, 433. No malice is necessary; it is sufficient to establish liability that DeAngelis acted intentionally and without legal or social justification. Hornstein v. Podwitz, 254 N.Y. 443, 448, 173 N.E. 674, 84 A.L.R. 1; Campbell v. Gates, supra; 6 Corbin on Contracts 855 (1951). Whether additional labels, such as fraud, conspiracy, or what not, are to he added seems to me merely garnishment of the essential facts which are enough to justify holding partnership property until the wrong is judicially established. Bernstein v. Van Heyghen Freres Societe Anonyme, 2 Cir., 163 F.2d 246, 248, certiorari denied 332 U.S. 772, 68 S.Ct. 88, 92 L.Ed. 357.
Against this background the other objections seem to me to fall rather quickly. That this big packing concern disposing of its own tallow is suddenly prevented from having any to meet its obligations to plaintiff seems to me an intentional interference with contract relations not to be wiped out by the suggestion that market forays might produce the tallow. Surely it is unrealistic to expect that this concern, stopped by its enfeebled financial condition from fulfilling its contracts in the normal and easy manner, could suddenly accomplish this the hard way. From the allegations it is clear that this was impossible and that DeAngelis knew it.
So, too, it is difficult for me to see how DeAngelis can be said not to be acting for his partnership when he cancelled the lease on the partnership’s fine asset in order to substitute a good tenant for a doubtful one. Surely this act for the benefit of the partnership could not be attacked for lack of authority by any of the immediate participants. Indeed, there is no suggestion of invalidity as to, say, the corporation or Gobel. But to say that this single indivisible act is the partnership’s where it is beneficial, but that the partnership need not bear any of the burdensome consequences, seems to me strange. I suggest that the answer is clear under N.Y. Partnership Law, The Uniform Partnership Act, § 24: “Where, by any wrongful act or omission of any partner acting in the ordinary course of the business of the partnership, * * * loss or in*126jury is caused to any person, not being a partner in the partnership, .* * * the partnership is liable therefor to the same extent as the partner so acting or omitting to act.” What more “ordinary course” may there be to a business than conserving its sole asset?
I would reverse.