Griswold v. Sundback

60 N.W. 1068, 6 S.D. 269, 1894 S.D. LEXIS 150
CourtSouth Dakota Supreme Court
DecidedNovember 28, 1894
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 60 N.W. 1068 (Griswold v. Sundback) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering South Dakota Supreme Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Griswold v. Sundback, 60 N.W. 1068, 6 S.D. 269, 1894 S.D. LEXIS 150 (S.D. 1894).

Opinion

Fuller, J.

This case now before us on rehearing is reported in 4 S. D. 441, 57 N. W. 339, and was instituted in the court below to recover from an attaching officer and his deputy the possession or value of a certain stock of' hardware kept for the purpose of retail trade in the village of Dell Rapids, of which the plaintiff claims to be the owner and entitled to the immediate possession; and the value of said stock of merchandise is alleged to be $4,000. The action is in claim and delivery, acd the complaint contains the usual averments. To justify the siezure of the property, and as a defense to the alleged cause of actioD, the defendants, a sheriff and his deputy, rely upon certain attachment proceedings at the suit of one Haish against Sibbison, set up in their answer, alleging a fraudulent sale from Sibbison to Griswold; and the evidence offered in support of the issues thus tendered is, so far as necessary to be considered, substantially as follows: On the 9th day of April, 1891, Sibbison, who was indebted to Haish in the sum of $1,700, owned the stock of merchandise in controversy, and was then, and for a number of years had been, engaged in the retail hardware business in Dell Rapids, occupying for that purpose a storeroom or building of which he appeared to be the owner; and the evidence, at least prima facie, shows that the plaintiff, Griswold, on the above-mentioned date, purchased from Sibbison said stock of hardware, and assumed immediate control of the business, and remained in constant and actual possession of the entire stock until the 20th of the same month,- when the attachment was levied thereon as the property of Sibbison, and the same was taken by the defendant sheriffs deputy into cus[272]*272todia legis, to await the order of the court or the final determination of the action then pending between Haish and Sibbison, and out of which the attachment issued. From the réturn and schedule of the attaching officer it appears that a full and complete inventory was made of the property seized, and the evidence shows that all the property was taken from his possession three days thereafter by the coroner of Minnehaha county, by virtue of this suit in claim and delivery; and the schedule and inventory made by the coroner correspond, in substance, with the inventory of the sheriff, above mentioned. • Before the delivery of the property to the plaintiff, Griswold, and within the time limited by law, an undertaking or redelivery bond was provided, as required by the statute, and1 the property was all returned by the coroner to the defendants, Sundback and Lund, and by them turned over to the attorney for the plaintiff in the attachment suit. Upon the trial, all evidence, under the answer, which tended to establish that the sale of the stock of hardware in controversy by the attachment debtor, Sibbison, to the plaintiff, Griswold, was fraudulent as to the attaching creditor, was excluded, on the ground that the attachment proceedings would not j ustify the siezure of the property, or constitue a defense to this action, because the defendants had unlawfully released their levy, and thereby became trespassers from the beginning; and in effect the only question which defendants were permitted to litigate was the identity and value of the property in dispute. Ostensibly, appellant’s petition for a rehearing was made and granted upon the theory that respondent was permitted to recover for various items of goods, wares, and merchandise that were never taken from his possession by appellants; but their counsel now maintain, in effect, that under the circumstances of this case apppellants should be permitted to justify under the attachment proceedings, notwithstanding they abandoned their levy by turning the property over to a stranger having no authority to receive the same, or any part thereof. We are well satisfied with the former decis[273]*273ion in that regard, and decline to give the question further consideration.

It has been noticed that plaintiff bases his right to immediate possession upon a claim of ownership, and in his complaint describes the property wrongfully detained as goods, wares, and merchandise situated in his store in Dell Rapids, which was formerly owned by W. J. Sibbison; and he alleges the value of the property to be $4,000, and avers that the same is more particularly described in his affidavit in claim and delivery; and it becomes necessary, therefore,' to examine the schedule of property thereto attached, the return of the coroner, the undertaking in claim and delivery, and the redelivery bond of the defendants, as it is claimed by counsel for appellant that there is no evidence identifying the property attached and taken into defendant’s possession as being the property claimed by plaintiff and described in'his affidavit and complaint, and that the court erred in holding, as. a matter of law, that plaintiff had so far established a case 'that the only question to be submitted to the jury was the measure of damages and the value of the property. While the plaintiff, in his complaint, describes the property in dispute as goods, wares, and merchandise of the value of $4,000, belonging to him and situated in his store in Dell Rapids, formerly owned by W. J. «Sibbison, he states that the affidavit herein contains a more particular description-of said property; and we find from an inspection thereof, and the undisputed evidence before us, that the schedule of property attached to said affidavit in claim and delivery, and claimed by the plaintiff, contains numerous items that were neither purchased by the plaintiff from, not attached by the defendants as the property of, Sibbison, and that said schedule consists of an inventory of the stock of hardware in dispute, taken about three months before plaintiff purchased, and defendants attached, the same, and that- intermediately sales had been made by Sibbison in the usual course of retail trade, with[274]*274out corresponding replenishment. This inventory was neither copied into the complaint nor attached thereto, and consequently became no part thereof; and, independently of the reference to the affidavit, we regard the description of the property contained in the complaint sufficient after verdict, as it conclusively appears that the property attached was the identical property purchased by plaintiff, taken by the coroner in this suit and returned to defendants, and by them turned over to the attorney for the attaching creditor; and the fact that numerous items of goods, wares, and merchandise were claimed by plaintiff, and charged to be wrongfully detained, which he did not own, would not alone be sufficient to defeat a recovery of so much thereof as he did in fact own, as shown by the evidence, and described in the complaint and schedule attached to his affidavit. Malone v. Stickney, 88 Ind. 594; Litchman v. Potter, 116 Mass. 371; Ellsworth v. Henshall, 4 G. Green 417; McCourt v. Bond, (Wis.) 25 N. W. 532; Cobby, Repl. 552.

It is evident from the return of the coroner and from the recitals of defendant’s redelivery bond, as well as from the undisputed testimony of the witnesses, that defendants never had in their possession all the property enumerated in the schedule attached to the affidavit in claim and delivery. The coroner returned* that he took possession of so much thereof as was at that time contained in a certain store building in the village of Dell Rapids, formerly occupied by A. W. Griswold as a hardware store”; and the redelivery bond designated the property as being a certain £>ortion of the property specified in the affidavit and undertaking in claim and delivery, and as shown by the inventory of the coroner.

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Bluebook (online)
60 N.W. 1068, 6 S.D. 269, 1894 S.D. LEXIS 150, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/griswold-v-sundback-sd-1894.