Sievers v. Woodburn Sarven Wheel Co.

• Decision Date: 16 April 1880
• Citation: 43 Mich. 275,5 N.W. 311
• Court: Michigan Supreme Court
• Parties: SIEVERS and others v. WOODBURN SARVEN WHEEL CO.

5 N.W. 311

43 Mich. 275

SIEVERS and others v. WOODBURN SARVEN WHEEL CO.

Supreme Court of Michigan

April 16, 1880

A judgment recovered before one justice of the peace cannot be garnished in proceedings before another justice of the peace.

Certiorari to justice of the peace.

Edwin F. Coneley, for plaintiff.

Joslyn & Freeman and James H. Pound, for defendant.

CAMPBELL J.

This is a certiorari to review proceedings in garnishment had before John Weber, a justice of the peace, whereby defendants in certiorari were allowed to recover against plaintiffs, as garnishees, the amount of a judgment against them and in favor of one Michael M. Geisler, rendered by Isaac N. Toll another justice of the peace. Defendants in certiorari had recovered a judgment against Geisler before Daniel Brown, a justice now out of office, whose docket is in the hands of Weber. The objection chiefly relied on is that a judgment before one justice cannot be garnished in proceedings before another justice. It might be sufficient in the present case to say that the garnishee judgment is void for want of jurisdiction over Erdman, who was never legally brought in; but the other question is so presented that we cannot properly disregard it, as it is made the only distinct ground of complaint in the affidavit.

Proceedings in garnishment are purely statutory, and cannot be extended to cases unprovided for without mischief. The statutes, at best, are imperfect, and any attempt to extend their operation is almost certain to create difficulties in regard to conflicting rights which it is impossible to reconcile.

In the case of Griffin v. Potter, 27 Mich. 166, we declined to compel a justice of the peace, who had collected a judgment in favor of relator, to pay over the amount to him when he had already in good faith applied it in payment of a judgment against relator rendered before himself. He had allowed garnishee process on this adverse judgment, under which the money due relator on the judgment in his favor had been paid by the garnished debtor to the justice. In that case the justice had been authorized by law to receive the money due on any judgment which he rendered. Comp.Laws, 5417. He had in his hands money belonging to one judgment creditor, which he applied on a judgment against the same creditor which he had authority to collect. It was not claimed or shown by relator that any rights or equities existed which stood in the way of such an application. The case presented no complications whatever, and we are not called on to construe or consider the garnishee law in all its bearings, because the remedy by mandamus would not have been allowed to compel a justice to refund money which had been applied by him in payment of...