Baltimore v. Allen.
| Decision Date | 28 November 1905 |
| Citation | 58 W.Va. 388 |
| Parties | Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company v. Allen. |
| Court | West Virginia Supreme Court |
Railroad corporations, chartered by other states, but owning and operating railroads in this State, have the status of residents of this State, although they are not citizens of it, within the meaning of clause 1 of section 2, Art. Ill, and clause 1 of section 2, Art. IV, of the Constitution of the United States, nor domiciled in this State in the technical sense of that term. (p. 398.)
Such corporations may be proceeded against as garnishees, without reference to the jurisdiction in which debts due from them were contracted or are payable, (p. 399.)
For the purposes of garnishment, a debt is annexed to the person of the debtor and subject to garnishment wherever he is found, unless expressly made payable elsewhere, (p. 400.)
Affirmed in part.
A debt may be attached by garnishment at the place of residence of the debtor, although it be expressly made payable elsewhere, (p. 390.)
Error to Circuit Court, Ohio County.
Application by the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad Company for writ of prohibition against James Allen, justice, and others. From an order denying the writ, plaintiff brings error.
Affirmed.
Robert White, J. B. Somerville, and I). C. Westenhaver, for plaintiff in error.
Caldwell & Caddwell, for defendants in error.
poffenbarg er, JuDG e:
Upon a writ of error to a judgment, discharging a rule in prohibition and dismissing plaintiff's petition, the inquiry is whether a justice of the peace has jurisdiction to proceed with an attachment against a railroad company, chartered by the legislature of Maryland and permitted by an act of the legislature of Virginia, before the division of the State, to build and operate its railroad through what is now West Virginia, as garnishee, for the subjection of a debt contracted by the same railroad company in the state of Pennsylvania, and payable there, to the satisfaction of a demand due from the creditor of said company to a third party, such creditor being a non-resident and not having appeared in the action. The supposed lack of jurisdiction is predicated upon two grounds: First. That the situs of the debt sought to be subjected is in the state of Pennsylvania, where the creditor resides, where it was contracted and where it is payable. Second. That though the situs of the debt be not in the state of the residence of the creditor, it is not in this State, because the garnishee is domiciled in another state and found here only temporarily.
H. F. Putnam, an employee of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad Company on part of its line in Pennsylvania, to whom said company was indebted for services, was himself indebted to J. D. Miller and Son, also residents of Pennsylvania. Miller & Son assigned their claim against Putnam to W. W. Rogers of Wheeling, who brought an action on it before Allen, justice of the peace of Ohio county, making the railroad company a garnishee. Thereupon the company presented its petition for a writ of prohibition to a judge of the circuit court of that county, who, after awarding a rule, discharged it on motion and dismissed the petition. The petition alleged, in addition to the facts already stated, that the debt due Putnam was contracted and payable in Pennsylvania.
Great conflict and confusion characterize the decisions of the courts of the several states, respecting the right to proceed by garnishment against debts due from corporations to non-residents and made payable in a foreign jurisdiction. Many of them rest their decisions on the theory that the debt follows the person of the creditor and can be subjected only in the jurisdiction in which he resides. Others take the opposite view, saying it follows the person of a debtor and belongs to the jurisdiction of his residence. Still others give the idea of situs no peculiar force, holding that it may be subjected wherever the debtor may be sued. The adherents to the first x)roposition defend it upon the ground, that the ownership of the debt is of necessity in the creditor, for no man can have property in a debt that he owes to another.
Thus, in National Bank v. Furtick, 2 Marvel (Del.) 35, 69 Am. St. Rep. 99, the court says:
In his very able note to this case, in 69 Am. St. Rep., Mr. Freeman says, at page 117: "By the great weight of reason and authority debts are considered as the property of the persons to whom they are due, and their situs to be at the domicile of the creditor for the purpose of garnishment, as for all other purposes."
Mr. Freeman does not mean to say, however, that the decisions in all the cases cited for the foregoing proposition were controlled by it. It is merely stated as a sort of basic principle which has been modified in several ways. In the next subdivision of his note, page 118, he says many of the leading cases cited hold that the rule has been dispensed with by statutes. 69 Am. St. Rep. 118, 119.
In a number of the cases referred to in these portions of the note, the decisions stand upon the view that neither debtor nor creditor resided in the state' in which it was attempted to subject the debt, and whether it was with the debtor or creditor was wholly immaterial. Swedish-American Bank v. Bleecker, 72 Minn. 383; Douglass v. Phenix Bis. Co., 138 N. Y. 209; Bank v. Furtick, 69 Am. St. Rep. 99; Rairoad Co. v. Dooley, 78 Ala. 524; Railroad Co. v. Chumley, 92 Ala. 317; Centred Trust Co. v. Chattanooga dec. Co., 68 Feci. Rep. 685.
Though a great deal is said in the reported cases in support of the doctrine that the debt follows the person of the creditor, few decisions in attachment cases stand upon it. It is usually referred to as a general principle having more or less bearing upon some other proposition which forms the basis of the final disposition of the case. Missouri Pacific Railway Co. v. Sharitt, 43 Kan. 375; Railway Co. v. Sturm and Railway Co. v. Campbell, reversed by the Supreme Court of the United States, 174 U. S. 710, however, adopt and apply that rule.
It is manifestly at variance with a fundamental principle of the law of attachment, and the conception of the nature of the rights to be vindicated and wrongs to be redressed, which originally called the remedy by attachment into being and has made its use indispensable in modern jurisprudence. All courts characterize it as a special, anomalous and harsh remedy, authorizing the seizure of the debtor's property in advance of an adjudication against him. It is based upon and deals with circumstances and conditions which put it beyond the power of the court to do justice and work out the substantial rights of the parties by the use of the ordinary legal remedies. Total want of remedy at law and inadequacy thereof in view of the peculiar situation of the parties, respecting property and personal rights, necessitated the establishment of the system known as equity jurisprudence for the vindication of equitable rights of which the law courts could take no notice and for relief against fraud and mistake. Under this system, authority is generally exercised over the persons of the parties in respect to their rights, rather than over the property which is the subject matter of their differences, although in many instances the property itself is a subject of the direct and immediate action of the court. But the circumstances are often such that the remedies in equity are not broad, flexible and swift enough to prevent the...
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