Cronin v. Foster
| Decision Date | 29 January 1881 |
| Citation | 13 R.I. 196 |
| Court | Rhode Island Supreme Court |
| Parties | CORNELIUS J. CRONIN v. HORACE FOSTER & EDWARD A. FOSTER, Copartners. |
A non-resident temporarily within the State cannot be garnished under the laws of Rhode Island.
ASSUMPSIT. On motion to discharge a garnishee.
Hugh J. Carroll, for plaintiff.
Pardon E. Tillinghast, for defendants and garnishee.
The plaintiff attached the personal property of the defendants in the hands of A. D. Briggs & Company of Springfield Massachusetts, by serving his writ on J. K. Smith of that firm. The plaintiff and the defendants were residents of Rhode Island. The debt intended to be garnished was due to the defendants by Briggs & Co. upon a contract for railroad work, which contract was made and the work performed in Rhode Island, and the payments had so far been made in Rhode Island. Smith makes affidavit that there was a sum due from Briggs & Co. to the defendants, but that all the members of the firm of Briggs & Co. were residents of Massachusetts, and that there was no personal property of the defendants in the hands of Briggs & Co. within the State of Rhode Island; that he came to see to the railroad work three or four times a week, and that his wife spent about three weeks in Rhode Island in the summer; that his home and office were in Springfield, and that he had none anywhere else.
Can a person temporarily in the State be garnished under our laws? This question was decided in the negative by our Supreme Court in Washington County, Eddy, C. J., presiding, as long ago as December, A. D. 1830. The plaintiff, a resident of Westerly, had his writ served, under the then trustee process, on General Williams of New London, Connecticut happening to find him on the Rhode Island side of the state line. The court held that a person transiently within the State could not be garnished, and that the service was void.
Under our statutes as they formerly stood, the process could only be used when the defendants were absent or absconding debtors; and the object appears to have been to enable creditors to reach debts, & c., which they might have left due to them at home.
By the custom of London, whence the process arose, no person could be served as trustee unless he resided within the jurisdiction of the court. And to this effect was the decision in many of the earlier cases here in the United States.
When a person transiently in another State...
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