Matthews v. Densmore

• Decision Date: 12 November 1883
• Citation: 3 S.Ct. 126,109 U.S. 216,27 L.Ed. 912
• Parties: MATTHEWS v. DENSMORE and others. 1
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

109 U.S. 216

3 S.Ct. 126

27 L.Ed. 912

MATTHEWS v. DENSMORE and others.¹

November 12, 1883.

This is a writ of error to the supreme court of the state of Michigan. The plaintiff in error was marshal of the United States for the eastern district of that state, and under a writ of attachment from the circuit court levied on a stock of goods which was the subject of controversy. The defendants in error, who were not the parties named in the writ of attachment, sued Matthews, the marshal, in trespass, on the ground that they were the owners of the goods, and that the goods were not liable to the attachment under which the marshal acted. To this action the defendant pleaded the general issue, with notice that he should rely on the writ of attachment, and should prove that the goods were subject to be seized under it. When the defendant, who was admitted to be the marshal, as he had alleged, offered in evidence the writ of attachment, the court refused to receive it, on the ground that it did not appear by the affidavit on which it was issued that the debt claimed by the plaintiff in the writ was due. As the plaintiffs in the present action were in possession of the goods when they were seized under the writ, this ruling of the court was decisive of the case, for, however fraudulent might have been that possession, the defendant here, in the absence of any valid writ, was a mere trespasser, and could have no right to contest the lawfulness of that possession. The whole case turned, therefore, on the trial in the local state court, as it did on the writ of error in the supreme court, which affirmed the judgment of the lower court, on the question of the validity of the writ of attachment in the hands of the marshal, and its sufficiency to protect him if the property seized under it was liable to be attached in that suit.

Don M. Dickinson and Julien G. Dickinson, for plaintiff in error.

O. M. Barnes, for defendants in error.

It is to be observed that this does not present a case where the validity of the writ is assailed by any proceeding in the court which issued it, either by a motion to set it aside as im- providently issued, or to discharge the levy and return the property, or by appeal to a higher court of the same jurisdiction to correct the error of issuing it on in insufficient affidavit, but it is a proceeding in a court of another jurisdiction to subject an officer of the United States to damages as a trespasser for executing a writ of the court to which he owes obedience.

The supreme court of Michigan, whose judgment we are reviewing, says of this writ, in answer to the argument that, being regular on its face, it should protect the officer:

'No doubt the writ in this case must be regarded as fair on its face. Under the general law relating to attachments, where the suit is begun by that writ, the affidavit is attached to and in legal effect becomes a part of it; and if then the affidavit is void the writ is void also. But under an amendatory statute passed in 1867, which permits the issue of the writ in pending suits, the affidavit is filed with the clerk, and the officer of whom the writ is issued is supposed to know nothing of it. Comp. Laws, § 643. It was under the amendatory statute that the writ in this case was issued, and an inspection of its provisions shows that the writ contains all the recitals that the statute requires.' 5 N. W. Rep. 671.

Here, then, we have a writ which is fair on its face, issued from a court which had jurisdiction both of the parties and of the subject-matter of the suit in which it was issued, and which was issued in the regular course of judicial proceeding by that court, and which the officer of the court in whose hands it was placed is bound to obey, and yet by the decision of the Michigan court it affords him no protection when he is sued there for executing its mandate. We do not think this is law. Certainly it is not the law which this court applies to the processes and officers of the courts of the United States, and of other courts of general jurisdiction.

It had been supposed by many sound lawyers, after the case of Freeman v. Howe, 24 How....