City of Memphis v. Laski

• Decision Date: 30 April 1872
• Citation: 56 Tenn. 511
• Parties: THE CITY OF MEMPHIS v. R. L. LASKI.
• Court: Tennessee Supreme Court

56 Tenn. 511

THE CITY OF MEMPHIS

v.R. L. LASKI.^a1

Supreme Court of Tennessee.

April Term, 1872.

FROM SHELBY.

Appeal in error from the judgment of the 1st Circuit Court, September Term, 1871. C. W. HEISKELL, J.

WALTER COLEMAN, SMITH & JEFFERSON, LEWIS & CRAIG, for appellant.

R. J. MORGAN, W. M. RANDOLPH for appellee.

SNEED, J., delivered the opinion of the Court.

We are of opinion that a municipal corporation is not subject to the process of garnishment at the suit of a private creditor of the employe of the corporation, and the determination of that question is decisive of this case, and results in the affirmance of the judgment below. The statute gives the remedy by garnishment to all persons, and defines “persons” to include “““corporations,” but we hold that the word “ corporations,” as here used, means private corporations, and not public or municipal corporations. Code, Secs. 50, 3087, 3478. We are not aware that the precise question has ever been before this court, but, upon principle, we think it is unquestionable that the city government in this case was not the subject of garnishment, and that the proceeding is ab initio void. A municipal corporation is created by the government for political purposes, and is vested with subordinate and local powers of legislation. It is an imperium in imperio, and can no more be embarrassed in the exercise of the governmental powers with which it is invested for the public good, than can the power creating it. The origin of municipal corporations, it is said, may be referred to the earliest institution of civil police. Thus it is said by Domat, “the same cause which has linked men together for supplying the wants of every one by the concourse and assistance of many others, has produced the first societies of villages, boroughs, cities, and towns. These cities, towns, counties, parishes, existing for public purposes, are public corporations, while banks, roads, canals, and the like are private corporations, though their use may be public. Ang. and Ames' Corp., 10, 28, 32. The first are local governments of a “public” which is only circumscribed by the limits of their jurisdiction; and whether large or small, the same reasons of public policy which forbid the embarrassment of the machinery of the State government by interrupting the proper functions of its officers by process of garnishment or attachment for the collection of debts between private persons, will protect these subordinate governments from a like interruption. In the case of the Bank of Tennessee v. Dibrell, it was held by this court that on considerations of public policy, the salaries of public officers are not liable to attachment or garnishment, and that the funds set apart by the State as compensation for its employes belong to the State until they pass out of the treasury and out of the hands of the disbursing agent. 3 King's Dig., Sec. 6980; 3 Sneed, 379. The principle, we take it, is one of universal application, and would cover all manner of garnishments like this as against the State, and applies with like force to the city or the town whose welfare might be seriously interrupted if the officers thereof can be at any time called away from their municipal duties to answer and defend the litigation of private creditors of the employes or creditors of the corporation, to say nothing of the peril that would threaten the public weal if the contractors and employes, as well as the enterprises of the corporation, could thus be paralyzed by the seizure and sequestration of the wages upon which the contractors and employes depend for the performance of their contracts. We are supported in this view by a number of strongly reasoned cases in some of the courts of our sister States. Merwin v. City of Chicago, 45 Ill., 134;Burnham v. The City of Fond DuLac, 15 Wis., 193;McDougal v. Board Supervisors, 4 Minn., 184;City of Chicago v. Hasley, 25 Ill., 596; Mayor of Baltimore v. Root, 8 Maryland, 102;Chaisly v. Brewer, 7 Mass., 260;Bulkley v. Ekhart, 3 Barr., 368; Mayor v. Rowland, 26 Ala., 503; Hawthorne v. St. Louis, 11 Mo., 59.

In one of these cases, in which the city of Chicago, at the suit of Merwin, had been summoned as a garnishee, the city, even without answer, was, by the court discharged as garnishee.

Upon appeal to the Court of Errors, Mr. Justice Lawrence, in delivering the opinion of the court, said, “The city should not be subjected to this species of litigation, no matter what may be the character of the indebtedness. If we hold it must answer in all these cases, and the exemption from liability be allowed to depend in each case upon the character of the indebtedness, we shall leave it liable to a vast amount of litigation in which it has no interest, and obliged to spend the money of the people and the time of its officials in the management of matters wholly foreign to the object of its creation. A municipal...