Holland v. Depriest
Holland v. Depriest
Opinion of the Court
The plaintiffs claim to be the employees and creditors of the McCaskill Mercantile and Lumber Company, an insolvent corporation. They began this proceeding by motion in the circuit court to compel the defendant, as sheriff of Shannon county, to satisfy their alleged claims for labor out of moneys in his hands and arising from the sale of attached property belonging to the corporation. The plaintiffs averred in their motion that in April, 1891, the defendant had seized all of the property of the lumber company under
The grounds of the motion are to be found in section 4911 of the Revised Statutes of 1889, which, under certain limitations and conditions, requires the claims of the employees of insolvents to be first paid. The section appeared for the first time in the revision of 1889 as an amendment to the execution law. It reads: ‘ ‘Hereafter when the property of any company, corporation, firm, or person shall be seized upon by any process of any court of this state, or when their business shall be suspended by the action of creditors, or be put into the hands of a receiver or trustee, then in all such cases the debts owing to laborers or servants, which have accrued by reason of their labor or employment, to an amount not exceeding one hundred dollars to each employee, for work or labor performed within six months next preceding the seizure or transfer of such property, shall be considered and treated as preferred debts, and such laborers or employees shall be preferred creditors, and shall be first paid in full; and if there be not sufficient
The defendant denied the authority of the circuit court to entertain the motion, and he set up the fact that, the day before the attachment of the property, the lumber company had made a general assignment of its property for the benefit of its creditors, and- that the assignee had claimed the property on interplea which had not been determined; that the plaintiffs had failed to have their claims allowed by the assignee, and that, if the defendant was then required to pay the plaintiffs’ demands, he might be compelled to answer to the assignee for the entire amount of money in his hands.
The first point made in the defendant’s brief is that, as section 4911, supra, is an amendment to the execution law, in so far as its terms apply to seizures under writs of attachment, it is unconstitutional. Constitution of Missouri, art. 4, sec. 28. When the case was first submitted, we were in doubt whether this question was raised on the .record, and, rather than run the risk of assuming an unauthorized jurisdiction, we transferred the case to the supreme court. 56 Mo. App. 513. That court has remanded it, holding that the question of the constitutionality of the law was not presented by the record. Therefore, all questions touching the validity of the statute must be put aside.
The contention, that the circuit court had not the jurisdiction to hear and determine the application, is not tenable. When the property was first seized, the application for payment was made to the sheriff, which could not then be complied with as the property consisted of specific chattels. Subsequently the assignee
As the insolvency of the lumber company was conceded, the claimants were entitled to have their claims preferred and paid either as against the attaching creditors or the assignee; therefore, they were not bound to wait for the termination of the interplea or the attachments. The manifest intention of the statute was to provide for the prompt payment of such claims for labor, leaving other rival claimants to settle their controversies among themselves.
The claim, that the defendant may be compelled to account to the assignee for the entire proceeds, is not well founded. The rule is that, whenever one does what the law authorizes, whoever sustains an injury on account of it must endure the loss. Bishop, Noncon-tract Law, sections 111 and 112.
With the concurrence of the other judges the judgment of the circuit court will be affirmed. It is so ordered.
Case-law data current through December 31, 2025. Source: CourtListener bulk data.