Donald W. Webber

In this case, a finance company (plaintiff) provided funds for a conditional sale of personal property and received an assignment of the unrecorded contract from the vendor; later, the vendor attached the same property to collect an unrelated debt from the buyer, prompting the finance company to seek replevin from the attaching officer. The trial court granted summary judgment for the plaintiff, which the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine affirmed. The court held that the governing recording statute (R.S.1954, Ch. 119, Sec. 9) protects only third parties and not original parties to the contract, so the vendor (and the officer standing in his shoes) could not invalidate the unrecorded agreement; it further concluded that the vendor was estopped from denying validity after assigning the contract for full consideration.

propertybusiness & regulatory

This case involves a motion for rehearing in Wood v. State, a Maine post-conviction relief proceeding. The petitioner had been denied his right to appeal his original criminal conviction and sought equivalent relief through statutory post-conviction procedures. In the prior decision, the court reviewed the full trial record, found no plain reversible errors, and denied relief, applying a rule that placed the burden on the petitioner to demonstrate such errors. On rehearing, the court considered the federal case Desmond v. United States but determined that it did not apply to or alter the outcome in state post-conviction proceedings, as those are governed by state procedural rules and had already provided a full equivalent of appellate review. The court therefore denied the motion for rehearing.

criminal lawprocedure

The case involved a buyer who purchased four pieces of construction equipment, including a used jackhammer, from a seller under a single conditional sale contract, but the seller failed to deliver the jackhammer because a third party in possession refused to release it. The trial court directed a verdict on liability for the buyer and allowed the jury to award damages that included loss of use and rentals, resulting in a $950 verdict. On appeal, the court upheld the liability ruling because the seller offered no legal excuse for non-delivery, but found the damages excessive and speculative since the equipment was not shown to be unique, the buyer made no effort to mitigate by purchasing a replacement, and the award exceeded evidence of fair market value; the court therefore ordered a new trial.

business & regulatoryprocedure

The case involved a man convicted of murdering his ex-wife who later petitioned for a writ of error coram nobis, alleging that his signed confession was coerced in violation of his constitutional rights and that the state had used perjured testimony. The court decided to deny the appeal and affirm the dismissal of the writ. The core reasoning was that the voluntariness of the confession had already been fully litigated at the original trial, where the defendant and his counsel knew the contents of the tape recording of the interrogation but objected to its admission; the recording did not support claims of coercion. The court further noted that the writ cannot be used to retry issues decided at trial or to seek a reduced sentence based on intoxication or other factors that do not legally reduce murder to manslaughter.

criminal lawprocedure