Court Opinion

ID: 8763835
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 12:17:24.644284+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:01:44.244038
License: Public Domain

SANBORN, Circuit Judge (concurring).
In my opinion the contract here in question evidences a conditional sale wherein the parties intended to agree, and did agree, that upon default in payment of any of the installments the vendor might collect the entire purchase price and might also retake and hold the property sold. It is only by a change in 'the decisive word of the agreement which seems to me to malee the contract mean the very opposite of what the parties intended and clearly expressed and by an extended argument that a different construction is justified. I am content .to take the agreement as the parties made and executed it without change. But such a contract is so unconscionable that it may not be enforced in equity, and a proceeding in bankruptcy is a proceeding in equity. In such a contract the vendor has the option to retake the property sold, to keep the payments already made, and to abandon collection of the future installments, or to keep the payments already made, to enforce the collection of the future installments by the sale of the property which he has taken back on the theory that it is security for the payment of the installments, to apply the proceeds to their payment and collect the balance, or to leave the property sold in the possession and ownership of the vendee and to collect the entire future installments. He may not, however, retake and retain the property sold, and then recover in equity the future installments of its purchase price, because the sale of the property is the consideration of the notes given or the promise made to pay the price.
On this ground I concur in the affirmance of the decree below.