Deficiency Judgment Limitations in California--A New Judicial Approach

In these cases the court resolved important deficiency questions. Of perhaps greater significance, it treated the sections as interrelated provisions and attributed a coherent purpose to the legislature in its enactment of them. It thereby established a frame of reference to which unresolved deficiency questions may be related. It is now possible, for example, to predict with some assurance of accuracy that (1) the guarantor or surety of a purchase money obligation is not protected by the purchase money deficiency prohibition of section 580b; (2) the assuming grantee of a nonpurchase money obligation will be protected by section 580b if he assumes the obligation as part of his purchase price; (3) an unsecured note for the balance of an otherwise secured purchase price will be collectable notwithstanding section 580b; and (4) the scope of the four deficiency sections is the same despite the verbal differences among them.4 Because analysis and prediction in terms of the frame of reference developed by the court in Roseleaf and Bargioni require repeated reference