Pearce & Renfroe v. Renfroe Bros.
Pearce & Renfroe v. Renfroe Bros.
Opinion of the Court
This case was appealed from the justice’s to the superior court, and contains five assignments of error.
Attachments returnable to a justice court should be directed to the constables only, and levied by the officer to whom directed. Code, §§3273, 3284.
Misdirection in attachment is amendable, and if levied by the proper officer, the proceeding is not void. 63 Ga., 227, 428.
Process returnable to a justice’s court must be served by a constable. Code, §4142. Constables cannot be sheriffs, nor can sheriffs be constables. Code, §470.
“A levy by an officer who has no authority is the same as no levy. Under section 888 of the Code, the sheriff had no authority to levy a tax execution when the principal amount did not exceed fifty dollars.” 60 Ga., 466.
It is, however, contended by counsel for plaintiff in error, that a claimant is estopped from denying the levy, because he must admit that there was one, before he has any of the rights of a claimant. We think this correct, and means only that after he has sworn that the property seized, if personal, was his property, and the bonds given under the claim laws being an admission upon his part that the property claimed was so seized, that then it would be absurd to allow him to come into court and deny his oath and the obligation of his contracts. But the seizure, or levy, is one thing, and the mandate of the court by which the act is done is altogether another and quite a different thing. And so, also, is the authority by which the officer, as such, makes the seizure. But this view of the case was considered wholly immaterial by the very learned counsel who argued it, and it was most earnestly maintained that the claimant could not deny that the levy was a legal levy, although it might have been made by himself or any other wholly unauthorized person. We cannot so hold. Nor do we think *197 that this view is at all inconsistent with the cases in 54 Ga., 297, and 59 Ib., 849. The question in the first case was, whether the levy was complete, the possession being the point of the levy. Of course it did not lie in the mouth of the claimant to deny that which he had sworn was true, and, to relieve the property of the levy or seizure, had entered into bonds for its forthcoming, and damages for any unlawful delay in stopping the sale.
In the second case the question was, whether the levy had been made on the property of the defendant in fi. fa., the sheriff not having stated in his entry thereof, “as the property of the defendant in fi. fa." The claimant, however, having sworn that the property levied upon as defendant’s was not his, but that of himself, the claimant, he was estopped from denying the truth of his oath. We cannot see any analogy between the cases.
Judgment affirmed.
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