Spraul v. Garliepp & Mack

WEYAND, J., pro tem. By stipulation, the above actions are to be heard and determined in this court upon the record as made in the trial court in the two above cases.

Plaintiff Spraul is the credit manager of the Standard Pipe & Supply Company, and is the assignee of certain claims of the said company against defendant Garliepp and Mack, which account was for oil well and oil drilling machinery and supplies sold to Garliepp and Mack. Julius Fried was originally the holder of a mortgage upon the property involved, and on the twenty-sixth day of October, 1929, by the terms of a bill of sale executed by Garliepp and wife, said oil well and oil drilling machinery were conveyed to said Fried.

The claims of plaintiff Spraul and the Standard Pipe & Supply Company are substantially identical. The action wherein Spraul is plaintiff was an attachment suit against Garliepp and Mack, on an open account claimed to be owing by them to the company named. In this suit Garliepp defaulted, Julius Fried intervened, and in his complaint in intervention made claim to the property attached by virtue of the bill of sale of October 26, 1929.

The action of Spraul, Plaintiff, v. Fried was tried and a judgment was therein rendered in favor of Fried.

On November 4, 1929, Fried, plaintiff in the second suit, brought an action in replevin for the property involved. In this action judgment likewise went for Fried.

Appeals were taken in the two cases and, as before stated, by stipulation, the two cases were agreed to be presented together.

The principal issue to be decided in this case is the construction to be placed upon the bill of sale under which Fried claims title to the personal property in question.

This bill of sale was from Garliepp and wife to Fried. Certain of the property was in Santa Barbara County and certain of it was stored in the yards of the Standard Pipe & Supply Company, in the city of Los Angeles, reference to [493]where parts thereof were situated being made. The bill of sale then proceeds as follows:

“Purchaser (Fried) does hereby agree with seller (Garliepp) that seller may use for a period of four months from the date hereof without any charge whatsoever, so much of said equipment as is now on that certain oil and gas lease known as the Donovan Lease, near Guadalupe, California, the same being now used by seller in the drilling of an oil well on said property.”