Recent Jurisprudence – Exception of Payment or Compensation in a Summary Commercial Action

The First Chamber of the Supreme Court of Mexico (SCJNC, for its acronym in Spanish) recently issued casedecision 1a./J. 69/2011 titled “Exception of Payment or Consideration. It is proper to oppose such in a summarycommercial action based on a credit instrument which has not been circulated, even when the respective paymentwas not annotated on the instrument itself, being that such constitutes a personal exception against the claimant.”Such case decision was issued pursuant to contradictory court opinions and, in its holding, the Supreme Courtdetermined that payments made on account of or for the entirety of the debt, which were not annotated on thedocument that is the subject matter of the claim, shall be considered a personal exception in a summarycommercial action in accordance with the General Law of Negotiable Instruments and Credit Operations,notwithstanding the fact that this law establishes a discharge or partial payment exception as evidenced by thetext of such document. The above is subject to the fact that that are instances in which partial payments are notannotated in the text of the document as a result of various circumstances. This does not mean that suchpayments lack value or should not be taken into account because they were not annotated on the correspondinginstrument, as payment is a defense which the respondent may raise against the claimant, the same which may bededuced from the facts that may extinguish or prevent the payment obligation.