Court Opinion

ID: 9448396
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:34:43.588021+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:25.067644
License: Public Domain

JONES, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
I cannot join in the decision of the Court that Florida Statutes, Ch. 524, establishes a mandatory exclusive system of perfecting assignments of accounts receivable. The majority is critical of the method adopted by the Florida Legislature unless it was intended to abolish the common law rule protecting an assignee who had given notice to the assignor’s debtor. I see no basis for this conclusion and suggest that the Florida Legislature could adopt the means it desired to accomplish the purpose of perfecting and protecting the lien of an assignee who had not given notice of the assignment to the assignor’s debtor. Neither the Landy case nor the Ribaudo case requires the decision which the majority reaches. It may be that under the statute an assignee who had filed would have some rights which an assignee who had given notice would not have had prior to the statute. Here, however, the assignee had given notice and its assignment would have been valid as against the trustee in bankruptcy in the absence of the statute, and, it seems, this is the view of the majority.
California has a statute similar in substance and enacted for the same purpose as the Florida act. In an opinion construing the California statute, and citing the Landy case, the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said:
“The primary purpose of the statute was to protect the assignee against a claim by the trustee while at the same time maintaining the practice of non-notification financing. Other objectives were secondary and incidental. It would be strange indeed if such a statute, enacted to benefit the assignee were to be used to deprive the assignee of rights it would have had if the statute had not been passed * * Costello v. Bank of America National Trust & Savings Association, 9th Cir. 1957, 246 F.2d 807, 813.
The language quoted may, in a sense, be dictum but, I submit, it is sound and logical, and the principle announced should be followed here. The case was cited by this Court in the Ribaudo case.