Fry

This is an appeal by the defendant Colopy from a judgment for damages based upon a stockholder’s liability for the debts of a corporation for breach of contract.

Two reasons are assigned by the defendant upon which he relies for a reversal of the judgment. First, that the agreement upon which the judgment is founded was a mere renewal of a former lease, for the breach of which a stockholder’s liability was barred by the limitations prescribed in section 359 of the Code of Civil Procedure. Second, that a former judgment against the corporation, which furnished the only evidence of the amount or character of the damages, was not a final judgment from which the time for appeal had expired, and that the judgment was therefore not competent as evidence of indebtedness of the corporation.

Plaintiffs were the owners of hotel property in Los Angeles. May 26, 1911, they executed a ten-year lease of this property to the Baltimore Hotel Company, a corporation, in consideration of $326,000, payable in equal monthly installments. Defendant was then a stockholder in the hotel corporation. This lease provided for the execution of a chattel mortgage on the hotel furniture to be held by…