Court Opinion

ID: 9460288
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 21:46:30.36251+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:33.501468
License: Public Domain

EDWARDS, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
In this ease the District Judge granted a summary judgment to defendant Union Planters National Bank of Memphis dismissing appellant Huber’s 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (1970) suit for deprivation of constitutional rights resulting from the bank’s repossession of her automobile.
Appellant had bought the automobile from a dealer in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the sales contract (not title retaining) was assigned to the First National Bank of Albuquerque. After she defaulted on two monthly payments and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, in order to be near her husband who was stationed at a naval air base there, the car was taken from her possession surreptitiously and without notice by an employee of the Union Planters Bank. Appellant found the car on the bank parking lot and took it back. She drove it to the naval air station and left it there on a parking lot. It was illegally parked and consequently was removed to a wrecking service garage by authority of the naval air base.
While the car was in that garage, the same Union Planters Bank employee, Burkett, got a Union Planters Bank lawyer, Norville, to seek a writ of replevin, while he, Burkett, was at the garage waiting to receive the writ. On its receipt Burkett took the car and it is undisputed that it subsequently was sent to the First National Bank of Albuquerque and was sold there.
Appellant paid up the two missing installments on the same day, June 15, 1972, that the writ of replevin was issued.
Plaintiff relies upon the doctrine of Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972), and her claim is that she was denied due process of law in that she was never served with any notice of the replevin proceedings and had no actual knowledge of them.
Under these facts I believe that plaintiff was the lawful owner and possessor of the automobile in question at the time of the replevin action and that she was deprived of her automobile by defendant Union Planters Bank and its agents without notice and in violation of the due process clause of the United States Constitution as construed in Fuentes v. Shevin, 407 U.S. 67, 92 S.Ct. 1983, 32 L.Ed.2d 556 (1972).
I would reverse.