Covell v. Heyman
| Decision Date | 31 March 1884 |
| Citation | 28 L.Ed. 390,4 S.Ct. 355,111 U.S. 176 |
| Parties | COVELL v. HEYMAN. 1 |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Roger M. Butterfield, for plaintiff in error.
Lyman D. Norris for defendant in error.
The defendant in error was the plaintiff in the state court, and brought her action of replevin for the recovery of specific personal property, to which she claimed title, and which she alleges was wrongfully detained from her by the plaintiff in error. The defendant below was deputy marshal of the United States, and, as such, had possession of the property replevied by virtue of an execution issued upon a judgment of the circuit court of the United States for the Western district of Michigan against Adolph Heyman, having taken the same by virtue of a levy under said execution, as the property of the judgment debtor. Judgment was rendered in the supreme court of the state for the plaintiff below, upon a finding in favor of her title to the property, reversing a judgment for the defendant below in the circuit court for the county of Kent. To reverse that judgment this writ of error is prosecuted.
The sole question presented for our decision is whether it was error in the state court to permit a recovery of the possession of property thus held, against a marshal of the United States or his deputy, for the rightful owner; and whether, on the other hand, it should not have adjudged in favor of the defendant below, that his possession of the property by virtue of the levy under the writ was, in itself, a complete defense to the action of replevin, without regard to the rightful ownership.
The case of Freeman v. Howe, 24 How. 450, was precisely like the present in its circumstances, except that there the process under which the marshal had seized and held the property replevied was an attachment according to the state practice in Massachusetts, being mesne process, directed, however, not against property specifically described, but commanding a levy, as in cases of fi. fa., upon the property of the defendant. Whether that difference is material is, perhaps, the only question to be considered, for the doctrine of that decision is too firmly established in this court to be longer open to question. The proper answer to it will be found by an examination of the principles on which the judgment in that case proceeded, and of those cases which preceded and of others which have followed it.
In the opinion in that case, Mr. Justice NELSON refers to the case of Taylor v. Carryl, 20 How. 583, as a conclusive and sufficient authority on the point. He said: 'The main point there decided was, that the property seized by the sheriff, under the process of attachment from the state court, and while in the custody of the officer, could not be seized or taken from him by a process from the district court of the United States, and that the attempt to seize it by the marshal, by a notice or otherwise, was a nullity, and gave the court no jurisdiction over it, inasmuch as to give jurisdiction to the district court, in a proceeding in rem, there must be a valid seizure and an actual control of the res under the process.' And referring to the grounds of the dissent in that case, he continues: 'The majority of the court was of opinion that according to the course of decision in the case of conflicting authorities under a state and federal process, and in order to avoid unseemly collision between them, the question as to which authority should for the time prevail, did not depend upon the rights of the respective parties to the property seized, whether the one was paramount to the other, but upon the question which jurisdiction had first attached by the seizure and custody of the property under its process.'
The opinion then proceeds to show that no distinction can be made, affecting the question, between process in rem and an attachment issued by a common-law court, although the latter is not the foundation of the jurisdiction, and the property seized is not the subject-matter of the suit, which is simply for the recovery of a debt, without a lien or charge upon the property, except that resulting from its seizure, as security for the judgment. The objection that the process was directed against the property of the defendant and conferred no authority upon the marshal to take the property of the plaintiffs in the replevin suit, is then answered, the court saying—'for the property having been seized under the process of attachment, and in the custody of the marshal, and the right to hold it being a question belonging to the federal court, under whose process it was seized, to determine, there was no authority, as we have seen, under the process of the state court to interfere with it.'
The opinion of the court then points out the error of Chancellor KENT in his statement, (1 Comm. 410,) that 'if a marshal of the United States, under an execution in favor of the United States against A., should seize the person or property of B., then the state courts have jurisdiction to protect the person and the property so illegally invaded.' Commenting on this statement, it is said that the effect of the principle, if admitted, would be to draw into the state courts, 'not only all questions of the liability of property seized upon mesne and final process issued under the authority of the federal courts, including the admiralty, for this court can be no exception, for the purposes for which it was seized, but also the arrests upon mesne and imprisonment upon final process of the person in both civil and criminal cases, for in every case the question of jurisdiction could be made;' and the court adds: 'We need scarcely remark that no government could maintain the administration or execution of its laws, civil of criminal, if the jurisdiction of its judicial tribunals were subject to the determination of another.'
To meet the objection that the party whose property had been wrongfully taken and withheld would be left without remedy, unless by virtue of citizenship he could sue in a federal court, the opinion then explains the remedy in such cases, by an ancillary proceeding in the court whose process has been made the instrument of the wrong,—a remedy the principle and procedured of remedy the principle and procedure of case of Krippendorf v. Hyde, 110 U. S. 276, S. C. 4 SUP. CT. REP. 27, to restate and reaffirm.
The point of the decision in Freeman v. Howe, supra, is that when property is taken and held under process, mesne or final, of a court of the United States, it is in the custody of the law, and within the exclusive jurisdiction of the court from which the process has issued, for the purposes of the writ; that the possession of the officer cannot be disturbed by process from any state court, because to disturb that possession would be to invade the jurisdiction of the court by whose command it is held, and to violate the law which that jurisdiction is appointed to administer; that any person, not a party to the suit or judgment, whose property has been wrongfully, but under color of process, taken and withheld, may prosecute, by ancillary proceedings, in the court whence the process issued, his remedy for restitution of the property or its proceeds, while remaining in the control of that court; but that all other remedies to which he may be entitled, against officers or parties, not involving the withdrawal of the property or its proceeds from the custody of the officer and the jurisdiction of the court, he may pursue in any tribunal, state or federal, having jurisdiction over the parties and the subject-matter. And, vice versa, the same principle protects the possession of property while thus held by process issuing from state courts, against any disturbance under process of the courts of the United States, excepting, of course, those cases wherein the latter exercise jurisdiction for the pur- pose of enforcing the supremacy of the constitution and laws of the United States.
The doctrine of Freeman v. Howe, supra, was further defined by the decision in Buck v. Colbath, 3 Wall. 334, which checked and corrected an attempted misapplication of its principle,...
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