Neely

William Gunning and his wife, Opal Gunning, residing in the State of Washington, on November 25, 1940, filed a petition as farm debtors asking for relief under § 75 of the Bankruptcy Act, 52 Stat. 939 , 11 U.S.C.A. § 203 . As a part of their assets they included a conditional sales contract dated September 29, 1938, wherein J. W. Neely, appellant, was vendor, and the alleged farmer debtors were purchasers of certain farm lands therein described, and of certain personal property used in the operation of the farm.

The vendees were in possession of the real and personal property as provided in the conditional sales agreement and have ever since continued in the possession thereof. The farm debtors, being unable to effectuate an agreement for composition and extension of their indebtedness, filed an amended petition under subdivision s of § 75, and were adjudged to be bankrupts. Thereafter, J. W. Neely, the vendor in the contract, filed *8 a petition in the bankruptcy court entitled a “petition to exempt real and personal property”. The petition was not in the proper sense one for exemption but one for declaration that the rights of the bankrupts in and to the real and personal…

(concurring).

I concur in the result of this opinion.

(dissenting).

The majority opinion is written on the basis of a holding that the contract of sale had not been forfeited when relief *12 in bankruptcy was sought, and therefore passed under the exclusive jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court pursuant to 11 U.S.C.A. § 203 , sub. n. That section places under the jurisdiction of the bankruptcy court “all real orpersonal property, * * * including among others, contracts for purchase, contracts for deed, or conditional sales contracts * * *.”

Appellees insist, and the majority holds, that when the bankruptcy proceedings were commenced, they were the owners of real or personal property, including the contract for purchase or conditional sales contract, or an equity or right in such property. If the contract of sale was forfeited prior to commencement of the bankruptcy proceedings, then the contract was no longer in existence, and appellees owned no real or personal .property therein. Whether they owned any other right in the contract will be hereafter discussed. Appellees do not contend that they owned anything, except possibly by inference a right to be relieved of the forfeiture, if the contract of sale actually was forfeited prior…