13 Pa. 483 | Pa. | 1850
Directness and plainness in the conduct of business affairs contributes much to the certainty and fairness of their adjustment; whilst complication and unnecessary interweaving of one transaction with another does greatly embarrass the judicial application of statutory and just principles to each. If the leading features of the act of 1886, concerning executions, were fully carried out regardless of former and sometimes conflicting decisions in relation to the law and priority of levies on personal property, the duties of sheriffs and the rights of parties with regard to conflicting executions would be disentangled, and much litigation and difficulty avoided. Every execution of fi. fa. would then stand alone, and on its own merits, neither bearing upon nor influenced by the conduct of the sheriff, in regard to another. Each execution creditor ought to look to the officer for a faithful execution of his process, according to the terms of his writ and the statute; and if he proceeded not according to those terms, then he should look to him alone. But if instead of that he choose to depart from the law either by permissive, collusive assent, or positive direction, so as to obstruct and hinder a subsequent execution in the hands of the sheriff, he ought to be postponed. There is no doubt but that a fi. fa. binds all the defendant’s personal property in the bailiwick, from the time it is put into the sheriff’s hands. Yet the object of the law is not to secure a continuing lien in favor of the execution creditor, but to enable him to obstruct fraudulent transfers by the debtor, and to secure his debt by a levy and sale of property, fraudulently or illegally transferred to defeat the execution. This court has often asserted the principle that a prior execution would be postponed to a subsequent one, if the former was put into the hands of the officer for the purpose of lien and not for the Iona fide purpose of making the money according to law. It seems to me that such a levy as that of the prior execution, in this case to wit, Shenfelder’s, if finally validated, would enable parties collusively to cover property in evasion of the statute and that class of decisions to which I have referred. The levy was upon certain articles and all the rest of defendant’s goods and chattels. This fi. fa. was issued on the 28th February, 1849, returnable to April term, of same year, and remained in the sheriff’s pocket or his drawer with its levy until June, when by stress of other executions returnable to August term, on all of which he endorsed the same levy as on Shenfelder’s, and on each subject to prior executions, he was forced, to sell. Here was no notice to other creditors of the levy on Shenfelder’s fi. fa. even in gross. If they saw a record of its being issued, and no return, they might well suppose it was.abandoned, lost or paid.
Now, although the sheriff in-'his testimony says, that Shenfelder did not tell him to stay proceedings, that he never said any
Amount in the hands of sheriff, $1897 97
From which deduct commissioner’s charge, $30 00
“ Prothonotary for list of judgments, 1 50
Do copy of app’t. 34
31 84
Amount to be distributed, $1866 13
This sum of $1866 13, in the hands of the sheriff to be distributed in the following manner:—
1. To Asaph Shenfelder, for rent, from the 1st day of January 1849, to the 2d June, 1849, the date of levy on J. S. Bichards’ execution, $94 37|-.
2. To John S. Bichards, on .the execution J. S. Bichards vs. Morris Pawly, fi. fa. to August T. 1849, No. 65.
Debt, . $329 30
Int. from May 16, 1849, to June 27,
1849, day of sale, 2 31
$331 61
3. To Edmund W. Earl, on execution E. W. Earl vs. Morris Pawly, fi. fa. to August T. 1849, No. 77, balance of debt, $1300 00
Int. from May,9,1849, to June 27, ’49, 10 40
$1310 40
4. To Augustus Boas, on execution Augustus Boas vs. Morris Pawly, fi. fa. to August term, 1849, No. 80. The balance remaining in hands of sheriff after payment of the above, to wit, the sum of $129 74J.