A.J. Properties, LLC v. Stanley Black and Decker, Inc. (Lawyers Weekly No. 10-154-14)
NOTICE: All slip opinions and orders are subject to formal revision and are superseded by the advance sheets and bound volumes of the Official Reports. If you find a typographical error or other formal error, please notify the Reporter of Decisions, Supreme Judicial Court, John Adams Courthouse, 1 Pemberton Square, Suite 2500, Boston, MA, 02108-1750; (617) 557-1030; SJCReporter@sjc.state.ma.us SJC-11424 A.J. PROPERTIES, LLC vs. STANLEY BLACK AND DECKER, INC. Suffolk. May 5, 2014. – September 5, 2014. Present: Ireland, C.J., Spina, Cordy, Botsford, Gants, Duffly, & Lenk, JJ.[1] Assignment. Debt. Mortgage, Assignment. Contract, Assignment, Surety. Surety. Bond, Private building project, Construction and contract bond. Environment, Environmental cleanup costs. Certification of a question of law to the Supreme Judicial Court by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on April 8, 2013. Gerard A. Butler, Jr. (Andrew D. Black with him) for the defendant. John A. Mavricos for the plaintiff. DUFFLY, J. At issue in this case is the right to payment under a performance bond issued to secure the obligation of an environmental consulting company to perform environmental remediation of a contaminated site that included land that had been owned by Stanley Black and Decker, Inc. (Stanley). In 2011, A.J. Properties, LLC (A.J. Properties), commenced the underlying action in the Superior Court, contending that it had acquired the rights to payment under the bond, and that Stanley had wrongfully collected payment. A.J. Properties argued that Stanley had assigned the rights to payment when it assigned a mortgage on the property to the Wyman–Gordon Company (Wyman-Gordon), which later assigned the mortgage to A.J. Properties. After Stanley removed the case to the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts, a judge of that court certified the following question to this court pursuant to S.J.C. rule 1:03, as appearing in 382 Mass. 700 (1981): “Does the rule of Quaranto v. Silverman, 345 Mass. 423, 426–[427] (1963) [(Quaranto)], that ‘the assignment of a debt carries with it every remedy or security that is incidental to the subject matter of the assignment and could have been used or made available to the assignor,’ extend to a situation where a mortgage and a surety agreement secured an obligation, and both the mortgagor and the surety breached that obligation prior to a written assignment of the mortgage, does the assignee, by operation of law, acquire the right against the surety’s receiver for the surety’s breach of its obligation?” We answer that whether the right against the surety’s receiver is deemed assigned by operation of the rule of Quaranto, supra, depends on whether the right is an incident to […]