Des Moines Sav. Bank v. Colfax Hotel Co.
| Decision Date | 12 May 1893 |
| Citation | 55 N.W. 67,88 Iowa 4 |
| Parties | DES MOINES SAVINGS BANK, Appellee, v. COLFAX HOTEL COMPANY, Appellee; EZEKIEL CLARK, Garnishee, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Polk District Court.--HON. C. P. HOLMES, Judge.
THE issue tried in this case in the court below was whether the garnishee, Clark, was indebted to the defendant, the Colfax Hotel Company. There was a trial by jury, and a verdict that Clark was so indebted in the sum of one thousand, three hundred and sixty-five dollars and five cents, and interest. From a judgment on the verdict, Clark, the garnishee appeals.
Affirmed.
C. C and C. L. Nourse, for appellant.
Cummins & Wright, for appellee.
I.
The case has once before been in this court upon an appeal by the plaintiff. See 79 Iowa 497. On the first trial it was held by the district court that no action could be maintained by the appellee, because the judgment upon which the garnishment process was based was satisfied. It was held by this court that the judgment was not satisfied, and that "the plaintiff was entitled to a finding as to the indebtedness of the garnishee, * * *" and the cause was remanded to the district court for such a finding. It is unnecessary to set out the facts upon which that ruling was based. They will be found in the opinion on the former appeal, and the only question left for determination was the amount of the garnishee's indebtedness, if any.
The garnishee was served with process in August, 1887. Before that date, and in 1885, the Colfax Hotel Company executed a deed of trust to Thomas S. Wright upon all its hotel property and all sums of money owing to the hotel company. It is claimed by the appellant that this deed of trust operated as an assignment of any debt due by him to the company, and that there was, therefore, no ground for the garnishment. A point is made whether the trust deed was valid as against an attaching creditor. In view of the undisputed facts of the case, it is not necessary to determine that question. It appears that before the appellant made this question in the district court, the trustee in the trust deed, the hotel company, and the beneficiaries under the trust deed, filed pleadings in which they all united in the demand that judgment should be rendered for the plaintiff for whatever amount should be found due to the hotel company from the garnishee. Under this waiver of any right which the trustee may have had to collect the debt, the debtor is in no position to urge that he is bound to pay his debt to the trustee, or to any one other than the plaintiff in this action.
II. It is next urged that the garnishee should have been discharged, because the investigation involved an adjustment of a matter of account between the Colfax Hotel Company and the garnishee, which could not be adjudicated in an action at law, and, being of equitable jurisdiction, the garnishee can not be required to try the issue in a garnishment proceeding. It is not to be denied that there are cases where an accounting between parties may be a subject of equitable jurisdiction. The facts in this case, however, show plainly that the matters in controversy were not such as required their determination by a court of equity. We need not set out the facts. It is enough to say that, if an action had been brought against the garnishee by the hotel company it could not have been maintained as a suit in equity. It was a plain matter of account, in no way involved, and it would have been the right of the plaintiff to have demanded a trial by jury. There was really but one controlling question in the case, and that was whether...
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