G Consulta

The “repo man” is a dreaded fixture in the collection business. His assignment is to take back your personal property (usually a motor vehicle) after you have defaulted in paying your chattel mortgage (such as a car loan). When you sign a loan contract, your motor vehicle is pledged as a collateral. This gives the mortgagee a security interest in your vehicle. If you fail to give your monthly payments on time, the lender may get a writ of replevin and repossess it without giving you an opportunity to settle your arrears. Replevin is an action whereby the owner or person entitled to repossession of goods or chattels may recover those goods from one who has wrongfully detained or taken such goods (Black’s Lw Dictionary, 1990). Replevin at common law was an action for the return of specific goods wrongfully taken or “distrained.”
Typically, it was used after a landlord (the “distrainor”) had seized possessions from a tenant (the “distrainee”) to satisfy a debt allegedly owned. TIthe tenant then instituted a replevin action and posted security, the landlord could be ordered to return the property at once, pending a final judgment in the underlying action. However, this prejudgment replevin of goods at common law did not follow from an entirely ex parte process of pleading by the distrainee. For “the distrainor could always stop the action of replevin by claiming to be the owner of goods; and this claim was often made to delay the proceedings, the writ de propriet ate pro banda was devised early in the 14th century which enabled the sheriff to determine summarily the question of ownership. If the question of ownership was determined against the distrainor, the goods were delivered back to the distrainee (Holdsworth, History of English Law, 1927). Some modern replevin statutes provide that a private party may obtain a prejudgment writ of replevin through a summary process of ex parte application.