Court Opinion

ID: 9587248
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:19:54.46624+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:36:32.614903
License: Public Domain

Berry, President,
dissenting:
I respectfully dissent from the majority opinion in this case.
*572The law applicable to such cases is quite clear and there is no controversy relative thereto. It is merely the application of the law as it is applied to the case at bar upon which this dissent is based. The appellant, J. & G. Construction Company, plaintiff below, contends that there was no controversy or dispute with regard to the amount owed in this case, and that the three checks in the amount of $10,000.00, which contained a notation “payment on account”, clearly indicated that the payments should be applied to any balance due and owing other than on the judgment which was confessed and a part of the amount claimed was due and owing.
The appellant, or plaintiff below, rests its entire case on these propositions, and this Court, through the majority opinion, found that the contentions of the appellant were correct in connection thereto, that is, that there was no controversy or dispute with regard to the amount owed, and that the appellee, or defendant below, by the notation “payment on account” designated that the payments were made on the balance due.
The word “account” is an indefinite word and has more than one meaning. John Diebold & Sons Stone Co. v. Tatterson, 115 Va. 66, 80 S. E. 585. It is a generic term which is difficult to define, having various meanings which depend upon the circumstances in which it is used. Walcott & Lincoln v. Butler, 155 Kan. 105, 122 P. 2d 720. In the instant case the defendant came into court, filed its plea of the general issue denying the plaintiff’s claim, and in addition thereto, filed a counter affidavit in which it confessed owing to the plaintiff $10,570.00, and upon oath, stated that it believed that was all that was due from the defendant to the plaintiff upon the demands stated in the plaintiff’s declaration. Upon the filing of this counter affidavit by the defendant, a judgment in the amount of $10,570.00 was obtained against it. In my opinion, the language contained in the sworn affidavit clearly constitutes a controversy with regard to the balance of the claim of the plaintiff.
The judgment in the amount of $10,570.00 was entered by the trial court on October 16, 1956, at which time the de*573fendant was granted leave to file additional pleas. The three payments mere made during the months of February, July and August, 1957. At that time the only definite amount of money due and owing by the defendant to the plaintiff was the judgment, and the notation “on account” could be as readily interpreted as payment on account of the judgment, as well as payment on account of the balance claimed by the plaintiff to be due.
In October, 1957, a plea of the Statute of Limitations was filed with regard to the balance claimed by the plaintiff below in this action, because the entire claim was about ten years old and not based on a written contract. The plaintiff below filed a replication to the plea of the Statute of Limitations in January, 1958. In July, 1959, the trial court sustained the defendant’s plea of the Statute of Limitations and this Court refused to grant a writ of error to that judgment. An execution was issued on the judgment some time in 1960, and in October, 1960, the defendant moved to quash the execution, and said motion was sustained by the Circuit Court of Monongalia County, but said Trial Court did not write an opinion or give any reasons for its finding of fact and conclusion of law relative to sustaining the motion to quash the execution. However, the trial court either had to find that the payments were made on the judgment by the defendant or the court itself applied them on the judgment. If the trial court found that the defendant intended to make the payments on the judgment he would then have had to base his finding on the testimony of the original attorney for the defendant, because this attorney withdrew from the case and testified at the hearing on the motion to quash the execution to the effect that it was the understanding that the payments were to be applied on the judgment. The original attorney for the plaintiff testified just the opposite, and this Court, in reversing the trial court’s decision, by necessity, based its decision, reversing the judgment of the trial court, on the testimony of the original attorney for the plaintiff who withdrew from the case and testified for the plaintiff below. Therefore, the majority of this court, in my opinion, has in effect reversed the lower court’s finding of fact which was supported by substantial evidence.
*574If there was a controversy with regard to the balance due in this case, then the creditor or the plaintiff below had no right under the law to apply such payments to any balance that may be due. 70 C.J.S., Payments, §60; The United States v. Kirkpatrick and others, 9 Wheaton’s Reports, 720, 737; Norris v. Beaty, et al., 6 W. Va. 477; Page v. Wilson, 28 A. 2d 706; Standard Surety Etc. Company v. United States of America, 154 F. 2d 335.
Although the president of the plaintiff corporation testified that the amount of the payments was applied to the balance due, the record in this case does not show that there was any actual application of such payments on the amount claimed to be due by the plaintiff in addition to the amount of the judgment. If neither the debtor nor the creditor designated where these payments were to be applied, then the court should apply the payments. 40 Am. Jur., Payments, §129; Standard Surety Etc. Company v. United States of America, supra.
It will be noted that the payments were made in the case at bar after the action was instituted in the Circuit Court of Monongalia County. It has been held that it is too late for a creditor to claim a right to credit a payment to any particular debt at the time of the trial. The United States v. Kirkpatrick and others, 9 Wheaton’s Report, 720, 737; Norris v. Beaty, supra.
The trial court made a finding of fact in this case, upon which there is evidence in the record to sustain such finding, and I am unable to say that the trial court was clearly wrong. Therefore, I am of the opinion that the judgment of the trial court should not be reversed. Moore v. Strickling, 46 W. Va. 515, 33 S. E. 274, 50 L.R.A. 279; Daugherty v. Ellis, 142 W. Va. 340, 97 S. E. 2d 33.