Witherspoon v. Cross

HAYNES, C.

This action is upon an undertaking on attachment, to recover damages alleged to have been sustained by the assignor of plaintiff, by reason of the depreciation in the market value of certain personal property belonging to said assignor while said property was held under attachment. The appellants were the sureties upon said attachment bond.

The action in which said writ of attachment issued was. brought by A. P. Cross against George W. Laing and others, to recover the sum of $1,984.10, and under said writ personal property belonging to said Laing, of the value of two thousand.

[97]

dollars, or over, was attached on February 3, 1898, and taken into the possession of the sheriff, and so remained until January 12, 1899, when judgment in said action was rendered in favor of said Laing, whereby the attached property was released. This action upon the attachment bond was tried by the court without a jury, findings were filed, and judgment for the plaintiff in the sum of five hundred dollars was entered, and defendants appeal from the judgment and an order denying their motion for a new trial.

The court found that the property levied upon and taken into the possession of the sheriff consisted of “one lot of groceries and provisions, 49,640 feet of lumber, 3,000 feet of track iron, one lot of tools, 14 cars, 1,200 feet of water-pipe, nine screens, two camping outfits, two sheds, and two bunkhouses”; that the market value of said property at the time it was seized under the writ was two thousand dollars. The court further found,—“That at the time said property was so released by the sheriff as aforesaid said property had been so negligently and carelessly kept and handled by said sheriff that a large part of said property was lost, destroyed, spoiled, and damaged, and a part thereof had been willfully consumed by the keepers of said sheriff; that the damage caused to said property by the acts of said sheriff and his keepers aforesaid was the sum of $1,000.00; that the market value of that part of said property that remained and was so released from attachment on said twelfth day of January was, at the time the same was released, the sum of $500; that during the time said property was so held under attachment by said sheriff and by reason of said property being so attached and taken and held in possession of said sheriff, as aforesaid, from February 3, 1898, to January 12, 1899, the value of said property greatly depreciated; that the amount of said depreciation in value, by reason of said attachment, exclusive of the damage to said property caused by the willful and negligent acts of the sheriff as aforesaid, was the sum of $500; that said George W. Laing sustained damages as aforesaid, by reason of said attachment in the sum of $500.”