Commonwealth Land Title Co. v. Kornbluth

Thomas Creech and Doris Donovan filed a successful personal lawsuit against O. John Kornbluth, securing a monetary judgment and a judgment lien against Kornbluth’s assets, including several parcels of real property (the parcels). When Creech and Donovan sought to pursue Kornbluth’s assets to satisfy their judgment, they discovered that Kornbluth had transferred all his real property to other people. Kornbluth continued to elude Creech’s and Donovan’s efforts to collect their judgment, and eventually Creech and Donovan assigned all their rights in the judgment to Commonwealth Land Title Company (Commonwealth) (plaintiff). Commonwealth began seeking to sell the parcels to satisfy the judgment. By this time, two of the parcels had come to be owned by the Bruinses and the Contrerases (defendants), respectively. The two properties were each encumbered by a deed of trust, and both deeds of trust were junior to Commonwealth’s lien. Commonwealth sought a writ of execution from the court allowing it to sell the Bruinses’ and the Contrerases’ properties, which the trial court granted. Before issuing its writ, the trial court did not establish the order in which Kornbluth transferred his properties after the original judgment was issued against him, whether those properties were transferred for value, or whether the transferees had notice of the judgment against Kornbluth. The Bruinses and the Contrerases appealed.