Pleasant Valley Farms & Morey Condensery Co. v. Carl

106 So. 427, 90 Fla. 420, 1925 Fla. LEXIS 611
CourtSupreme Court of Florida
DecidedOctober 31, 1925
StatusPublished
Cited by23 cases

This text of 106 So. 427 (Pleasant Valley Farms & Morey Condensery Co. v. Carl) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Supreme Court of Florida primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Pleasant Valley Farms & Morey Condensery Co. v. Carl, 106 So. 427, 90 Fla. 420, 1925 Fla. LEXIS 611 (Fla. 1925).

Opinion

Ellis, J.-

The defendant in error, Edgar A. Carl, was indebted .to the plaintiff in error, Pleasant Yalley Farms and Morey Condensery Company, a Wisconsin Corporation, in the sum of $1547.35, and sent his check on The Southern Bank and Trust Company of Miami Florida in payment of the debt.

*422 Before the check in due course was presented for payment Mr. Carl stopped the payment of it and the Pleasant Valley Corporation brought its action against him in Dade County, the county of defendant’s residence, to recover upon the debt.

Mr. Shntts, one of the attorneys for the Company, while the action was pending and before judgment applied for and obtained a writ of garnishment to The Southern Bank and Trust Company and two other banks. Two of them answered denying the possession or custody by them of any money or other property belonging to the defendant, but The Southern Bank and Trust Company answered that it was indebted to Mr. Carl in the sum of $1629.25, and that it held that sum for his use and benefit.

The defendant filed an affidavit traversing certain allegations in the Slrutts ’ affidavit and alleging other facts as to the defendant’s financial worth and as to the detrimental effect upon his credit which the issuing of the garnishment had.

These two allegations were stricken from the affidavit upon plaintiff’s motion and the defendant moved to dissolve the garnishment upon the traverse tendered.

There was a trial by jury upon the issues made by the two affidavits, and a verdict for the defendant. The judgment of the court was entered dissolving the garnishment and releasing the garnishee from all liability thereunder.

The plaintiff took a writ of error to that interlocutory judgment.

The first question presented by this record is:

Will a writ of error lie to an order dissolving a.garnishment before' final judgment in the action in which it is obtained 1

If it will not then this Court has no jurisdiction to determine the questions presented by counsel on this record *423 and the writ of error should be dismissed. It is also true that writ of error to a. final judgment would- not lie at the suit of the plaintiff if the judgment was in its favor and the corporation not aggrieved by it. Nor would a writ of error postponed until final judgment, if it was against the plaintiff, save any right it might have acquired under, the garnishment.

Under the code both a writ of error and an appeal were seemingly allowable in the same case. See McClellan’s Digest, p. 840, Sec. 2; Jeffreys et al. v. Coleman, 20 Fla. 536.

In the ease above cited an action was commenced :by summons served personally upon defendant. An ancillary attachment was obtained the same day. The following day the defendant moved to dissolve it. On the day prior to the entry of the final judgment for plaintiff in the principal action the court.dismissed the attachment. .The plaintiff took an appeal from that order and a writ of - error to the judgment. The writ of error was dismissed as it did not appear to the court as efficient to conserve the right of-the plaintiffs if they were aggrieved, but the cause was retained on the appeal and .the order dissolving the attachment was reversed.

The case turned upon the proposition that the plaintiffs had acquired a lien by the attachment upon the property attached, and its dissolution deprived them of a right which did not affect the progress of the suit upon the cause of action. The court said the order was more than interlocutory because nothing remained to be done to extinguish the lien. It was final and settled all the rights of the parties involved in it. The court quoted opinions of other courts upon the definition of a “final decree or order” within the provision allowing an appeal to any- order or decree which is conclusive as to its object or subject. The *424 Statute of February 10,1832, as amended by Chapter 3008, Acts of 1877, was referred to as providing that if either party shall feel aggrieved by a final judgment or decree he may appeal.

The doctrine as announced in that case, as applied to appeals from orders dissolving attachments, was followed by this Court in Williams v. Hutchinson, 26 Fla. 513, 7 South. Rep. 852; Mullen v. Camp, 46 Fla. 234, 35 South. Rep. 402.

In the latter case the Court said that the ancillary attachment proceedings and the main action are severable so that judgment may be reversed in one and affirmed in the other.

The statute relating to writs of garnishment makes no provision for either appeal or writ of error from orders dissolving or refusing to dissolve the garnishment. And under the statutes now in force a writ of error is the only method by which final ’judgments in common law actions are reviewed, except in cases where certiorari or prohibition shall lie or where it may be otherwise expressly provided. Sec. 2900-2901, Revised General Statutes.

In the Williams case, supra, there was an appeal from the order dissolving the attachment but in the Mullen case, supra, a writ of error was taken from the final judgment in the main case.

It may be assumed therefore that where ancillary attachments have issued and been dissolved by order of the court prior to judgment in the main action, writs of error will lie to such orders. The reasoning supporting such assumption seems to rest upon the following propositions: First, the two proceedings are several; Second, the order dissolving an ancillary attachment is conclusive as to its object; Third; the. attachment secures to the plaintiff in the main action a lien of the benefits of which he is deprived by the order dissolving the attachment; Fourth, a reviewal of the order *425 would not restore plaintiff to his rights if postponed to a hearing on writ of error to the final judgment in the main cause.

The analogy between writs of attachment and writs of garnishment is almost complete. But analogy is an unsafe ground of reasoning and its conclusions should seldom be received without some degree of distrust. It has been said by a learned author upon the subject of Political Philosophy, that, “It is by the urging of different analogies that the contention qf the bar is carried on, ’ ’ but that the accuracy of the conclusions obtained therefrom depends upon the careful comparison, adjudgment and reconciliation of them with one another.

There is no statute providing for writs of error to orders dissolving attachments, but in the Williams case, supra, the court held that such an order, even where the attachment is ancillary, being effective to abate the attachment proceedings, is a final judgment from which an appeal lies.

When that ease arose the appellate jurisdiction of this court could be invoked in an action at law by either appeal or writ of error from or to final judgment.

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Bluebook (online)
106 So. 427, 90 Fla. 420, 1925 Fla. LEXIS 611, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/pleasant-valley-farms-morey-condensery-co-v-carl-fla-1925.