Court Opinion

ID: 9477789
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-05 06:31:06.329949+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:46:02.734761
License: Public Domain

CUDAHY, Circuit Judge,
concurring:
I join in the result and in a good deal of the majority’s able analysis. The majority points out the rather tenuous — practically non-existent — historical connection between the law of growing crops and the law of fixtures. I think there is little benefit at this late date in subsuming crops under the rubric of fixtures. U.C.C. section 9-313(1)(c) invites us to look to state real estate law — not state fixture law — to determine whether these vines are “fixtures” under the Code. Because state real property law distinguishes vegetable matter from fixtures, I would simply apply the common-law objective intent test here. Here the cranberry vines are not “growing crops” but are part of the real estate because there is no objective intent to harvest them. Although the vines in this case were in fact harvested, a third-party lender or other objective observer would view cranberry vines as a permanent addition to the freehold in the absence of specific evidence to the contrary. The courts below applied a slightly different test, that for fixtures; nonetheless, they correctly looked at objective manifestations of intent. Hence, a remand does not appear to be necessary.