46:33-1. Requisites of contracts, agreements or chattel mortgages; acknowledgment or proof; record; marking of equipment or vehicles; recording fees; mortgages and personal property excepted; laws not applicable

Whenever (a) any railroad or street railway equipment and rolling stock or (b) any motor vehicles or other vehicles for use by any transportation company shall be sold, leased or loaned on condition that the title to the same shall remain in the vendor, lessor or bailor until the terms of the contract as to the payment of installments or rentals, or the performance of other obligations thereunder shall have been complied with, and possession of such property shall have been delivered under such contract, or (c) whenever any such property shall have been mortgaged, such condition or the lien of such mortgage shall not be valid as to any subsequent judgment creditor, or any subsequent purchaser or mortgagee for a valuable consideration without notice; unless:

a. Such contract of sale, lease or loan or mortgage shall be evidenced by writing, duly acknowledged or proved as conveyances of real estate are required to be acknowledged or proved; and

b. The contract of sale, lease or loan or the mortgage shall be recorded:

(1) In the office of the secretary of state, when the vendee, lessee, bailee or mortgagor is a corporation operating its road in more than one county in the State, in a book to be kept for that purpose, which book shall be indexed in the names of both the vendor and vendee, lessor and lessee, bailor and bailee and mortgagee and mortgagor, as the case may be; or

(2) In the office of the county recording officer, when such line is operated in one county only, as a mortgage on goods and chattels; and

c. Each locomotive, car, motor vehicle or other vehicle shall have the name of the vendor, lessor, bailor, mortgagee or assignee thereof plainly marked on both sides thereof, followed by the word "owner," "lessor," "bailor," "mortgagee," or "assignee," as the case may be.

The records required to be made by this section shall contain a statement of either the sum remaining to be paid upon the sale, lease, loan or mortgage or the purchase price of the equipment, rolling stock, motor vehicles or other vehicles.

For the recording required by this section the recording officer shall be entitled to receive the fees prescribed by sections 22:4-1, 22:4-4 of the Title "Fees and Costs."

This section shall not apply to any sale, lease or loan of, or chattel mortgage upon, motor vehicles, when the contract, agreement or chattel mortgage includes or covers less than fifty such motor vehicles; nor to any mortgage of personal property included in a mortgage of franchises and real estate heretofore or hereafter made by any railroad company or any other corporation defined in any law of this State as a public utility and which has been recorded or registered as required by section 46:28-14 of the Revised Statutes.

Other provisions of law relating to conditional sales and mortgages of personal property, which are either in conflict with the provisions of this section, or are inapplicable to the property described in this section because of the nature of such property, shall have no application to sales, leases or loans of or chattel mortgages upon the property herein described.

Amended by L.1940, c. 10, s. 1.