Leake v. Lacey

• Decision Date: 08 April 1895
• Citation: 95 Ga. 747,22 S.E. 655
• Parties: LEAKE et al. v. LACEY.
• Court: Georgia Supreme Court

22 S.E. 655

95 Ga. 747

LEAKE et al.

v.LACEY.

Supreme Court of Georgia.

April 8, 1895.

Garnishment or Municipal Corporation.

A municipal corporation is not subject to be garnished for money due by it to a contractor for constructing a sewer or other public work, although such work had been fully completed before the time when the garnishment was served, and the indebtedness of the municipality was for the balance then due the contractor. Public policy requires that such corporations shall be exempt from the process of garnishment. (Syllabus by the Court.)

Error from superior court, Polk county; C. G. Janes, Judge.

Action by Leake & Vandivander and others against D. B. Lacey. Judgment for defendant and plaintiffs bring error. Brought forward from last term. Code, §§ 4271a-4271c. Affirmed.

Thompson & Ramsaur and W. P. Turner, for plaintiffs in error.

Sanders &. Davis and Irwin & Bunn, for defendant in error.

LUMPKIN, J. This case turns upon the question whether or not a municipal corporation is subject to the process of garnishment sued out for the purpose of reaching a sum of money due by the mayor and council to a contractor who had constructed a public sewer. It could scarcely be doubted that if the public work was uncompleted a creditor of the contractor could not, by garnishment cut off payments which would otherwise be made by the municipal authorities to the contractor as the work progressed. It is obvious that if this were allowed it might, and in most cases would, seriously interfere with the performance by the contractor of his undertaking, and thus the public would be subjected to inconvenience and delay at the instance and for the benefit of a party in whose affairs it had no interest or concern whatever. It very frequently happens that a contractor actually needs partial payments in order to be able to carry on his work. We deem it unnecessary to consume further time in endeavoring to show that in a case of this kind it would never do to hold that municipal authorities could be subjected to the process of garnishment. The protection of the contractor might be a matter of no great concern, and there is, perhaps, no special reason why the law would favor him; but the welfare of the public requires the prompt and speedy completion of works in which the community at large is interested, and forbids the delaying of the same for the sake of a mere individual. In the present case, however, it was insisted that the reason for the rule above stated would...