Hoopes & Townsend Co. v. Ebel

Citations

• 37 Pa. Super. 459
• 1908 Pa. Super. LEXIS 311

Syllabus

<p>Attachment under the act of 1869 — Fraudulent debtor’s act — Execution.</p> <p>A carter, without criminal knowledge or intent and without fraud or such gross negligence as amounted to fraud, but with such knowledge and failure to exercise due care as would debar him from setting up the special and exceptional privilege of a carter in defense to a civil action brought against him by the party injured, assisted a thief in the felonious conversion of the goods of another by hauling them from the premises of the owner to places designated by the thief, and storing some of them upon his own premises. For the value of the services thus rendered, he issued an attachment under the act of 1869 and obtained a judgment against the thief not collusively, but by adverse, regular and legal proceedings. Subsequently the owner by an attachment under the act of 1869 seized the goods stolen, and also a machine the property of the thief, which had never been the property of the owner of the goods stolen, and which had not been acquired by the thief in exchange for the stolen goods or the proceeds thereof, but which was covered by the carter’s attachment. The carter under his judgment levied on the machine, and in an interpleader between himself and the owner of the stolen goods he recovered a judgment against such owner for the value of the machine. Subsequently the owner of the stolen goods filed a bill in equity against the carter to restrain him from bringing any action to recover the machine or its value. Held, that the complainant was without equity, had an adequate remedy at law, and that the bill should be dismissed.</p> <p>The jurisdiction given to a court of equity for the prevention or restraint of the commission of acts contrary to law and prejudicial to the rights of individuals, was never intended to be used to' obstruct the collection of debts. It is only where the creditor is clearly and undeniably proceeding against right and justice, to use the process of the law t