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Stabiler v. Webb (1979)

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Stabiler v. Webb, 375 So. 2d 980 (Miss. 1979)

Legal information, not legal advice. Verify against the cited opinion.

  • Citation: Dennis Ray Stabiler et ux. v. F. E. Webb, 375 So. 2d 980 (Miss. 1979) (No. 51386; decided Sept. 12, 1979; rehearing denied Oct. 31, 1979).
  • Court / Year: Supreme Court of Mississippi, 1979 (Walker, J.).
  • Topic tags: forfeiture · equitable_interest · cure/reinstatement (§ 89-1-59)
  • Facts: Webb sold real estate to the Stabilers under a 1974 installment contract for the purchase and sale of real property (200 down; 227 monthly $200 installments at 6%); the buyers also agreed to pay taxes and insurance. The contract provided that on delinquency in any two payments (or other default) the contract was “ex post facto terminated” and “all monies paid … shall be forfeited” to the seller. A special master found the buyers more than two installments in arrears (totaling several thousand dollars including unpaid taxes and insurance). Webb sued in chancery to cancel the contract, recover possession, recover unpaid installments, and obtain damages.
  • Holding:
    1. The CFD forfeiture/cancellation clause is enforceable. The Court affirmed cancellation of the contract and forfeiture of the payments the buyers had already made, construing the clause to mean the buyer forfeits prior payments and the vendor retains them as compensation.
    2. § 89-1-59 applies to a contract for deed. “A contract for the purchase and sale of real property which provided for monthly installments comes within this section.” The buyers could have cured the arrearage and reinstated before sale under § 89-1-59 but failed to invoke it, so they could not complain of the cancellation.
    3. No double recovery. The vendor may either forfeit the buyer’s prior payments or recover the past-due installments — not both. The Court reversed and rendered the additional $4,823.36 money judgment for past-due installments/taxes/insurance, and remanded for determination of fair-rental value for the buyers’ post-cancellation holdover.
  • Reasoning: Forfeiture-waiver cases the buyers cited (Ratliff, Gannaway, Denkmann) were distinguishable because the buyers denied being in arrears at all, so no demand for accelerated payment was required. The buyers’ real protection was the statutory reinstatement-before-sale right of § 89-1-59, which they did not use. The Court read the forfeiture clause under ordinary contract-intent principles (U.S.F.&G. v. Parsons) as liquidated compensation, but disallowed stacking a money judgment on top of the forfeiture.
  • Note on the “treat-as-mortgage” language: The opinion quotes 77 Am. Jur. 2d Vendor and Purchaser § 415 — that a title-retaining vendor is, in the view of “many courts,” a holder of “a lien for the unpaid purchase price which is similar to a mortgage, his title being held merely as security for the debt.” This is a treatise recital, not an adopted Mississippi holding; the Court’s decision rested on the contract and § 89-1-59, and it enforced forfeiture rather than treating the CFD as a mortgage to be foreclosed. The case should not be cited for a Mississippi treat-as-security / equitable-conversion rule.
  • Practical impact for CFD operators/buyers: This is the controlling Mississippi CFD-remedies case. For sellers: a forfeiture/cancellation clause is enforceable through a chancery cancellation suit, but you must elect — forfeit prior payments or sue for the arrearage, not both. For buyers: your decisive protection is the § 89-1-59 right to cure the past-due amount (plus costs/fees) before any sale; accrued equity alone is not an established forfeiture defense in Mississippi.
  • Good-law status: Good law; cited e.g. in Stinson v. Williamson (In re Williamson), 844 F.2d 1166 (5th Cir. 1988) (applying Mississippi land-sale-contract law).
  • Source (retrieved): https://static.case.law/so2d/375/cases/0980-03.json (full opinion text retrieved from the Harvard Caselaw Access Project, CAP id 9632896; cross-indexed at https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/1758217/stabiler-v-webb/). · Verified: 2026-06-08

Jurisdictions that follow / cite: mississippi

Disclaimer. Legal information, not legal advice. Confirm the opinion is still good law before relying on it.

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