36 Pa. Super. 593 | Pa. Super. Ct. | 1908
Opinion by
At the trial of this case the defendant offered to show that the property levied on by him was not the property of the defendant in the execution, but of one Willis H. Smith, who was the sole and exclusive owner thereof. This offer was refused by the court and the jury was instructed that the defendant could not deny the ownership of the property in the defendant in the execution. This instruction was based on the interpretation given by the learned trial judge to the act of May 26, 1897, prescribing the procedure where goods or chattels are levied on by the sheriff and claimed by another than the defendant in the execution, which was in substance that the obligation was imperative on the sheriff to proceed for an inter-pleader as provided for in the statute and that his neglect so to do rendered him liable for the amount of the writ or the value of the property .levied on, if that was less than the debt, interest and costs, even if the defendant in the execution had no title whatever to the subject of the levy. This view of the act, we think, warps it from the object of its enactment and imposes a penalty on the sheriff not expressed nor intended. No such consequence was involved in the sheriff’s interpleader act of April 10, 1848, as extended throughout the state by the act of March 10, 1858, and unless the act of 1897 contains some provision which shows that the well-established law as to the liability of the sheriff has been changed, there is a lack of support for the conclusion reached at the trial. The interpleader practice in the case of a levy by the sheriff was established for the relief and protection of that officer, as appears from the act itself and from the decisions of the courts bearing on that subject, and not in behalf of contending claimants for the property. The sheriff was to be made secure against the trouble and expense of a suit as well as saved from the probability of a judgment against him. As between the claimant and the plaintiff in the execution he becomes a stakeholder liable to be called upon from different directions while in the honest discharge of his official duty, and is, therefore, entitled to protection. Of the act of 1897, it was said in Book v. Sharpe, 189 Pa. 44, that it is substantially nothing
The judgment is reversed and a venire facias de novo awarded.