Page:Harvard Law Review Volume 9.djvu/165

137 LAW OF SAFE-DEPOSIT COMPANIES. 137 order upon the company to open the safe and file an inventory of its con- tents. This I am of opinion I have no power to do." In Bottom v. Clarke (7 Cush. 487), where a locked trunk was deposited in the vault of a bank for safe-keeping merely, with the consent of the officers of the bank, who were ignorant of its con- tents and had no authority to open the trunk for the purpose of ascertaining them, it was held that neither the bank nor its officers could be charged by the trustee process either for the contents of the trunk or the trunk itself. Garnishment, therefore, cannot be resorted to for the purpose of reaching property so deposited, and seizure by the sheriff under direct attachment remains as the only available method. That this may be used can be gathered from the paragraph quoted from Waples on Attachment and the cases cited. Beyond this, that the legality of such seizure has been upheld by the courts is shown in Roberts v. The Stuyvesant Safe-Deposit Company (123 N. Y. 57) and United States v. Graff (67 Barb. 304), in both of which cases the process was held to be regular. In the latter case, the fact that it had been held in Gregg v. Hilson that garnishment would not lie against a safe-deposit company was used as an argument by the court in holding that property deposited with such a company could be seized by the sheriff, on the ground that property so placed must of necessity be subject to some form of process. The reasoning of the court in this connection is very clear : — "There was nothing improper in that part of the order made which directed the sheriff to open the safe and tin box containing the defend- ant's property. The process could be effectually served in no other way. It was the duty of the officer acting under it immediately to attach the real and personal estate of the debtor. And that could only be done by taking it into his custody, where the property was tangible in its char- acter. Neither the safe nor the tin box constituted any portion of the defendant's dwelling, and they were not within the protection which the law affords to that against an officer acting under civil process. They were simply places of deposit and safe-keeping for the defendant's prop- erty, which the sheriff may enter to make the seizure required by law in the execution of the process in his hands. If that were not so, there would be nothing to prevent a failing or insolvent debtor from turning all his property into valuable securities or other articles, requiring but little space for their custody, and then placing them in the hands of a safe- deposit company for preservation, and defying all the efforts of his cred- itors to satisfy their debts by resorting to them. That would form an