## Facts

- Tiar Duke financed a Dodge Charger and later defaulted on the loan.
- The secured party retained Access Auto Recovery, LLC to repossess the vehicle.
- Gustavo Soto (Access Auto’s owner) and Jerome Baca (Access Auto’s employee) entered Duke’s property to take the Charger through self-help repossession.
- Duke confronted Soto and Baca and repeatedly told them to leave her property.
- A verbal dispute escalated into a physical altercation, including pushing.
- Duke called 911 during the encounter.
- Police officers responded and intervened, and the vehicle was ultimately repossessed.
- Duke sued Soto and Access Auto, asserting that they unlawfully remained on her property and repossessed the car after the repossession became a breach of the peace, supporting claims including trespass and violation of New Mexico’s repossession rules based on U.C.C. § 9-609.

## Issues

1. Whether pushing and other physical contact during a self-help repossession constitutes a “breach of the peace” under U.C.C. § 9-609, even if the debtor initiated the physical contact.
2. Whether, after a breach of the peace and the debtor’s demands that the repossessors leave, the repossessors lose any privilege to remain on the debtor’s property and may be liable for trespass and related statutory violations if they continue the repossession.

## Decision

- The court held that pushing is physical violence and that actual violence during a repossession constitutes a breach of the peace, regardless of who initiated it.
- The court concluded that once a breach of the peace occurs, the self-help repossession privilege under U.C.C. § 9-609 is no longer available for continuing the repossession at that time and place.
- The court determined that a repossessor’s limited privilege to be on the debtor’s land for repossession purposes can end when the repossession involves a breach of the peace and the debtor objects and tells the repossessor to leave.
- The court’s ruling allowed Duke’s theories—based on breach of the peace and continued presence on the property—to proceed, including trespass and the claim grounded in the breach-of-the-peace limitation on self-help repossession.

## Legal Principles

- After default, a secured party may repossess collateral without judicial process only if it proceeds “without breach of the peace” under U.C.C. § 9-609.
- Physical violence during repossession—such as pushing—constitutes a breach of the peace, and the breach-of-the-peace bar applies even if the debtor started the physical contact.
- When a breach of the peace occurs, the repossessor must stop self-help efforts and use judicial process rather than continue the seizure.
- A repossessor’s entry onto the debtor’s property is at most a limited, conditional privilege tied to peaceful repossession; that privilege can terminate when the repossession becomes non-peaceful and the debtor objects.
- Continuing to remain on the property and proceed with repossession after the privilege ends can support trespass liability and liability based on violation of the breach-of-the-peace condition in U.C.C. § 9-609.

## Conclusion

Duke v. Garcia treated physical pushing during a contested repossession as a breach of the peace under U.C.C. § 9-609 as a matter of law, without regard to which side initiated the contact, and reasoned that once the repossession crossed that line—especially after Duke told the repossessors to leave—the repossessors could no longer rely on self-help authority to stay and take the vehicle, leaving them exposed to trespass and related claims based on continuing the repossession after the breach.


Duke v. Garcia, 2014 WL 1318646 (2014)