Fuentes bought some furniture
from Shevin's store on credit.
The store had a policy that
said that you needed to pay off all of the individual pieces of furniture
before they handed over title to any of the pieces.
Shevin claimed Fuentes was
behind on her payments and repossessed all of her furniture. Fuentes sued.
Under the law of the time,
Shevin only had to go to a Court clerk (no judge!) and get them to swear
that the loan is in default. Then Shevin repossessed the furniture,
prior to anyone hearing the merits of the case.
The US Supreme Court found
that Fuentes' due process was
violated because she may have had a defense that she hadn't had the
opportunity to present.
Basically, the courts can't
penalize someone by taking away their furniture without at least giving
them a chance to argue their side of the case before an impartial
authority.
In a follow-up case, Mitchell
v. W.T. Grant Co., (416 US 600 (1974)) Louisiana
interpreted the Fuentes
decision to require that the store go before a judge with sworn
affidavits, a bond, and a reason to believe that the debtor would dispose
of the property if they felt that it would be repossessed.
The US Supreme Court found
that this satisfied due process.
See also North Georgia
Finishing Inc. v. Di-Chem Inc., (419 US 601 (1975))
where the US Supreme Court found that the Georgia courts did not meet the
due process standard set by Mitchell.
A lot of these due process cases were decided in the 1960s, because until
that time, poor people did not have lawyers. It was only when lawyers
began to represent the poor did laws like this began to be seen.
Some would say that you
should interpret laws based upon the original intent of the writers of
the law. However, this ignores the fact that many parts of the
Constitution were written at a time when the poor were not adequately
represented in Courts, so the case law often unfairly' ruled against
them.
