2 Ga. App. 537 | Ga. Ct. App. | 1907
This case originated in a justice’s court of Fulton count}’, where J. S. Fowler appeared as plaintiff, J. Cable Davis as defendant, and the Mutual Beserve Life Insurance Company as garnishee. A judgment was rendered against the main defendant, and upon a trial upon a traverse of the answer of the garnishee a judgment was rendered against it. The case was appealed to the superior court, and upon a trial before a jury a verdict was rendered against the garnishee for $133.15, being the principal and interest of the debt due to Fowler by Davis. A motion for new trial having been denied, the case was brought to this court for review. In addition to the allegation of error that
As appears from the record, the Mutual Reserve Fund Association, now the Mutual Reserve Life Insurance Company, on July 1st, 1901, made a contract with J. Cable Davis, of Atlanta, Geor
As a matter of common knowledge it was frequently true that .before the passage of the amending act of 1901 creditors defeated the process of garnishment and rendered it inoperative, or attempted to do so, by making advance payments to their employees or by accepting orders given by defendants in garnishment after the serv
We are not called upon at this time to pass upon a judgment in a case where there was no evidence that there was an anterior indebtedness. In such a case it would be for a jury to say whether
It is wholly immaterial to the present discussion whether the- “ company waived any of its rights under the contract with relation to the collection of the premiums, because the evidence showed that it has never owed Davis anything at any time, even if Davis-might have owed it less if it had required the literal fulfillment of the contract. There is nothing ruled in this case which is antagonistic to the ruling in Odum v. Ry. Co., 118 Ga. 794. In. the Odum case Judge Cobb, delivering the opinion, says: “The purpose of the act was evidently to alter the rule which had been laid down by this court, in several cases, to the effect that, even, after a summons of garnishment had been served, no lien would, attach upon an advance payment for services to be performed in the future.” And he cites the cases of Standard Wagon Co. v. Lowry, 94 Ga. 614; McKee v. Ga. Oil Co., 99 Ga. 107; Wilson v. Georgia R. Co., 103 Ga. 578, and the cases cited there. And the court unanimously concur in the opinion that it was not the intention of the legislature to hold an employer, who had advanced. money to his employee prior to service of summons of garnishment upon him, liable to pay to a garnishing creditor that portion of the amount advanced which was unearned at the date of the service of the summons of garnishment. This construction, which would force the garnishee to collect for the garnishing creditor before he is permitted to procure the repayment of a just debt due to himself by the common debtor, is declared to be too unreasonable and arbitrary to be adopted, since the language of the act construed as a. whole does not demand •such interpretation. So far as appears to-
Judgment reversed.