Blanchard v. Brown

• Decision Date: 01 October 1879
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: GEORGE P. BLANCHARD v. JAMES H. BROWN.

3 N.W. 246

42 Mich. 46

GEORGE P. BLANCHARD v. JAMES H. BROWN.

Supreme Court of Michigan

October 1879

If a party has good grounds to believe the existence of facts authorizing an attachment, his writ, properly issued, is good, and the fact such attachment may be dissolved is not inconsistent with the existence of good grounds for his belief. Where, in an action for damages resulting from attachment, there is no legal evidence of want of good reason for the belief on which an affidavit of attachment is based the court cannot assume that there was wrong done in suing out the writ. After seizure the property is in the hands of the officers, and where so in possession plaintiff is not liable for their acts after order for its restoration.

Error to superior court of Grand Rapids.

D.E Corbitt, for plaintiff.

O.C. Ransom, for defendant.

CAMPBELL C.J.

Plaintiff sued defendant for damages claimed to have resulted from a wrongful suit in attachment, under which plaintiff's property was levied on by the under sheriff of Kent county. The attachment was dissolved, and the action of the circuit court commissioner was affirmed by this court on certiorari in November, 1878. Some facts were relied on to show a wrongful detention, which plaintiff claims to have been equivalent to a conversion, after the affirmance of the action of the commissioner.

The plaintiff on the trial proved a taking by the under sheriff under claim of an attachment, and of Brown's co-operation therein, and showed the value of the property. He introduced no other testimony.

The defendant then offered the affidavit and other attachment proceedings, which were admitted under objection. There is some difficulty in determining which party showed the subsequent proceedings, which included, in addition to the certiorari and affirmance of the commissioner's order, an order by the circuit judge staying proceedings under the dissolving order pending the certiorari. There was also evidence of what occurred after the affirmance of that order on which the claim of conversion is founded.

We cannot understand the reason for objecting to proof of the attachment proceedings, when plaintiff expressly declared on them as the chief ground of action. They were clearly admissible.

There was no allegation in the declaration of malice, and there was no proof whatever that Brown had not good reason to suppose Blanchard guilty of such conduct as...