Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 5.djvu/233

217 THE VALIDITY OF ATTACHMENTS. 2J sand dollars has no object in realizing more than five thousand dollars and costs from the property attached. The greatest inequal- ity would prevail among the creditors ; and by a little information to favored creditors a bankrupt could in effect prefer them, with- out having made what would in law constitute a preference. In view of these considerations of law and fact, the case of Dehon v. Foster seems to have been well decided. It certainly is no greater stretch of the powers of a court of equity than English Chancellors in earlier days often made in support of what they conceived to be just. The case has been somewhat followed in this country in an analogous class of cases in which a creditor, with a view to evade the exemption laws of the State where he and his debtor reside, makes an attachment or garnishment in another State of goods or credits of his debtor which are exempt from attachment or execution in the State where both parties are domiciled. It has been held in Indiana, 1 Kansas, 2 Maryland, 3 and Ohio 4 that the creditor may be enjoined in the State of his domicile from prosecuting such an attachment. Twenty years after the decision in Dehon v. Foster, the case of Lawrence v. Batcheller 5 arose. This was similar in its facts to the earlier case, with the additional circumstance that the creditor, after the insolvency, and before action brought by the assignees, had obtained judgments and collected the amount of his claim by means of garnishments made, as in Dehon v. Foster, shortly before the insolvency, and with knowledge that it was likely to occur. The action was an action of contract to recover the amount so collected by the creditor. It was decided by the court that the plaintiffs could not recover. The grounds on which the court de- cided the case were in substance that the case was not within the statutes, for no reference was made in them to attachments outside the State ; nor within the English precedents, for they allowed a re- covery only when the attachments were subsequent to the bank- ruptcy; nor within the principle of Dehon v. Foster, for reasons which the court stated as follows: " The argument of the plaintiffs in the case at bar is, that, as it was contrary to equity for the de- fendant to proceed with his suits to judgments, and to a satisfac- tion of the judgments from the funds attached, so it is contrary to 1 Wilson v. Joseph, 107 Ind. 490. 2 Zimmerman v. Franke, 34 Kas. 650. 8 Keyser v. Rice, 47 Md. 203. * Snook v. Snetzer, 25 Ohio St. 516. 6 Lawrence v. Batcheller, 131 Mass. 504.