Court Opinion

ID: 9601215
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 01:39:48.317506+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:01:56.093524
License: Public Domain

SCHAUER, J.
I concur in the judgment. I think, however, that the concluding paragraph of the majority opinion is too broad in the light of any evidence I have been able to find in the record. That paragraph says: “From the evidence before the trial court, it would appear that defendant Carole Cramer did not receive ‘fair consideration’ for her conveyance and since she was thereby rendered insolvent, the conveyance- was void as against plaintiff.”
This is an action to set aside a conveyance allegedly executed to defraud plaintiff, a judgment creditor of defendant Carole Cramer. The judgment held by plaintiff against Carole is based on a tort which she committed. The testimony of defendant Coury, called as a witness by plaintiff under section 2055 of the Code of Civil Procedure, indicates that a debt owed Coury by defendant Paul Cramer (Carole’s husband), was cancelled in return for the deed (to Coury) from defendant Carole Cramer, and that such debt represented payments past due to Coury as lessor of certain business property held by Paul Cramer as lessee, from which Coury had threatened to oust Cramer unless the debt was paid. If, upon a retrial of this action defendants establish *326that Carole Cramer possessed a community property interest in the business conducted by her husband, or in the earnings thereof, and gave the deed in order to protect such interest, then I think a different question might be presented as to whether her conveyance was made “without a fair consideration” under the terms of section 3439.04 of the Civil Code.
On such a retrial the matters of whether the business and its earnings constituted community property, whether Carole’s tort (on which plaintiff’s judgment is based) was committed before or after her marriage to Paul Cramer, and whether community property of Paul and Carole is liable for such tort (see Civ. Code, §§170, 171a; Johnson v. Taylor (1931), 120 Cal.App.Supp. 771 [4 P.2d 999] ; White v. Gobey (1933), 130 Cal.App.Supp. 789 [19 P.2d 876]; Smedberg v. Bevilockway (1935), 7 Cal.App.2d 578, 581-583 [46 P.2d 820] ; Medical Finance Assn. v. Allum (1937), 22 Cal.App.2d Supp. 747 [66 P.2d 761]; McClain v. Tufts (1947), 83 Cal.App.2d 140 [187 P.2d 818] ; 5 Cal.Jur. 353, § 31; 3 Cal.Jur., 10-Yr.Supp. 667-668, § 149; see, also, 21 So.Cal.L.Rev. 388; 22 Cal.L.Rev. 554; McCaslin v. Schouten (1940), 294 Mich. 180 [292 N.W. 696]), would appear relevant to the issues of “fair consideration” and validity of the conveyance. We should not (as was held in Hampton v. Superior Court (1952), 38 Cal.2d 652, 657 [241 P.2d 1], to have occurred in Young v. Hampton (1951), 36 Cal.2d 799, 806 [228 P.2d 1, 19 A.L.R.2d 830]) use language so broad as to render res judicata or law of the case an issue which has never been litigated.