Trafton v. Hoxie

• Decision Date: 21 August 1935
• Citation: 180 A. 800
• Court: Maine Supreme Court
• Parties: TRAFTON v. HOXIE.

180 A. 800

TRAFTON

v. HOXIE.

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine.

Aug. 21, 1935.

Report from Superior Court, Piscataquis County.

Action by Llewellyn B. Trafton against Lloyd H. Hoxie. On report pursuant to the agreement of the parties.

Judgment for defendant.

Argued before PATTANGALL, C. J., and DUNN, STURGIS, BARNES, THAXTER, and HUDSON, JJ.

John S. Williams, of Guilford, and Martin L. Durgin, of Milo, for plaintiff.

E. P. Murray, of Bangor, and Harold Hayes, for defendant.

STURGIS, Justice.

Action of trespass for false imprisonment reported upon the agreement of the parties that, if the action is not maintainable, judgment shall be for the defendant, but, if maintainable, the case is to be sent back for the determination of damages.

The evidence and stipulations reported show that on January 25, 1933, the defendant, a duly qualified deputy sheriff of Piscataquis county, arrested and committed the plaintiff to jail on a capias execution issued from the superior court within and for the county of Penobscot. The deputy did not return the execution to the court from which it issued, but delivered it with his return indorsed thereon to the sheriff as keeper of the jail.

The execution having been issued after poor debtor disclosure proceedings on an original execution, a copy of the certificate of the disclosure commissioner of the following tenor was attached thereto:

"State of Maine

"Piscataguis, ss. September 28, A. D. 1932.

"I, Harold M. Hayes, Judge of Piscataquis Municipal Court, within and for said County, and qualified as such, acting as Disclosure Commissioner, do hereby certify that upon application of Abraham M. Rudman, Esquire, as attorney of the owner of the judgment on which the within execution was issued, the debtor therein named was duly and legally summoned to appear before me, at the Municipal Court Room in Guilford in said County, on the twenty-eighth day of September A. D. 1932 at ten o'clock in the forenoon to make, on oath, a full and true disclosure of all his business and property affairs.

"That at said time and place the said debtor L. B. Trafton failed to appear and submit himself to examination and to make disclosure in manner aforesaid; whereupon his default was recorded and I issued a capias, as provided in section 38, chapter 124 of the Revised Statutes, and annexed the same to this execution.

"Harold M. Hayes

"Judge of Piscataquis Municipal Court, acting as Disclosure Commissioner [Seal.]"

On the back of the execution appeared the indorsement, "Mr. Officer—Collect 220.66 or commit. A. M. Rudman, Attorney."

The defendant in his pleadings justifies under the process. The plaintiff attacks the validity of the execution on the grounds that the direction to the officer indorsed on it by the attorney for the judgment creditor is uncertain and the disclosure commissioner in his certificate referred to the wrong section of the statute as authority for the debtor's default and the issuance of the capias. The plaintiff also denies the right of the officer to justify under the process which was not returned to the court from which it issued. These are the only challenges to his imprisonment pressed before this court.

It is a well-settled rule of law that, for reasons founded on public policy, the law protects its officers in the performance of their duties if there is no defect rendering the process void or want of jurisdiction apparent on the face of the writ or warrant under which they act. The officer is not bound to look beyond his process. He is not to exercise his judgment touching the validity of it in point of law. He may justify, though in fact the warrant may have been issued without authority or if there be irregularities rendering it voidable but not void. Irregularities merely that are amendable do not vitiate it. "The officer stands upon defensible ground unless the process be absolutely void." Elsemore v. Longfellow, 76 Me. 128; Rush v. Buckley, 100 Me. 322, 61 A. 774, 70 L. R. A. 464, 4 Ann. Cas. 318; Kalloch v. Newbert, 105 Me. 23, 72 A. 736; Faloon v. O'Connell, 113 Me. 30, 92 A. 932.

The indorsement of the attorney for the judgment creditor on the back of the execution that the officer should collect or commit is no part of the process, and uncertainty therein, if there be such, cannot affect its validity. The cases cited on the brief in this attack on the process are not in point.

The reference of the disclosure commissioner in his certificate to "section 38, chapter 124 of the Revised Statutes," as the authority for the default he recorded against the plaintiff in the poor debtor proceedings and the capias issued thereon, as appears in the copy of the certificate attached to the execution on which the arrest was here made, was erroneous. The correct...