Tisch v. Utz

Citations

• 142 Pa. 186
• 21 A. 808
• 1891 Pa. LEXIS 724

Syllabus

<p>[To be reported.]</p> <p>1. When personal property has been attached by proceedings under § 27, act of July 12, 1842, P. L. 346, and is afterwards levied on and sold by the sheriff, under an execution against the same debtor at the suit of another creditor, the effect of the sale is to transfer the lien of the attachment from the property to the fund.</p> <p>2. In such a case, if the execution creditor becomes the purchaser at the sheriff’s sale, he takes a title which the attaching creditors cannot impeach by afterwards levying on the same goods as the property of their debtor, provided the judgment under which the sale took place was bona fide and for an honest debt.</p> <p>3. In a feigned issue under the sheriff’s interpleader act, the plaintiff claimed title by a sheriff’s sale under a judgment in his own favor; it was error to admit, and submit to the jury as evidence of fraud, a bill of sale of the property unaccompanied by possession, given by the debtor prior to the sheriff’s sale as security for the judgment.</p> <p>4. Such a bill of sale the law declares a fraud upon creditors when there is no corresponding change of possession, but it is a constructive fraud only, and is not of itself evidence of actual fraud; wherefore, the only question being as to the bona fides of the judgment, the continued possession by the debtor was, of itself, irrelevant to the issue.</p> <p>5. A defendant in a judgment cannot destroy it by his mere declarations; and his statements, made to third persons in the absence of the plaintiff, are inadmissible to show that the judgment was fraudulent, when the plaintiff has not been shown otherwise to be a party to a fraudulent, combination with the defendant: Unangst v. Goodyear Co., 141 Pa. 127.</p>