Edwards v. Sumner
Edwards v. Sumner
Opinion of the Court
By the Rev. Sts. c. 90, §§ 57, 61, the proceeds of personal property which is attached, and is sold before judgment is recovered against the owner, “shall be held by the officer, subject to the attachment or attachments, and shall be disposed of in like manner as the said property would have been held and disposed of, if it had remained unsold.” Now, if the goods, which the defendant attached, had remained unsold, and had not been seized in execution
It is by the legal operation of the assignment, and not by actual notice to creditors or officers, that the debtor’s property is vested in the assignee, and that attachments thereof are dissolved. Publication of notice is the decisive fact in this matter, and is notice, actual or constructive, by which all parties are bound. Even actual notice, before publication, will not affect an attaching creditor’s rights. Clarke v. Minot, 4 Met. 346. In that case, the chief justice said, “ We are now seeking to ascertain and fix the point of time intended by the statute as the time at which all the property of the
Suppose that Friend had died insolvent on the day before he petitioned for the benefit of the insolvent law. The attachment "would have been dissolved, provided administration had been taken on his estate, within a year; and the money in the defendant’s hands would have been payable to the administrator, for the benefit of all the creditors. Rev. Sts. c. 90, § 105. Could it be pretended that the defendant, in such case, if he had paid over the money to the attaching creditor, could resist the claim of the administrator, on the mere ground of want of notice of Friend’s death ?
There is no more hardship in the present case than in any other in which an officer, for want of notice, takes the property of one person, on a writ or execution against another. He may, in all cases, take an indemnity beforehand; and in this case he is entitled to recover back the money from the creditor to whom he paid it. Judgment on the verdict
Reference
- Full Case Name
- Abraham Edwards v. Thomas Sumner
- Status
- Published