Case ID: mass_5/html/0246-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Parsons, C. J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

* Oliver Pollard versus James Ross and Trustee.
    The sheriff, having received money upon an execution, cannot be held as the trustee of the judgment creditor, until after a demand made upon him by the judgment creditor.
    In this action John Chandler, Esq., sheriff of the county of Kennebeck, was summoned as trustee of Ross, the defendant. From his answers (on which alone a question came before the Court, Ross having been defaulted) it appears that having in his hands, as sheriff of the county, an execution sued by Ross vs. Pollard, he collected the money of Pollard, and returned the execution; that he has not paid the money over to Ross, who has never demanded the same of him; that soon after the execution was returned, he was sued as the trustee of Ross, the former plaintiff, by Pollard, the former judgment debtor, who now moved the Court that the sheriff may be adjudged the trustee of Ross.
    
   The opinion of the Court was delivered by

Parsons, C. J.

The sheriff, when sued as trustee, had no goods or effects of Ross in his hands, the money he received not being Ross’s property. He had no credits of Ross in his hands, because the sum levied had not been demanded of him; and until then Ross could maintain no action against him.

These principles were recognized in the case of Wilder vs. Bailey & Trustee . ■ When we consider the parties in this case, the necessity of applying these principles is manifest. Here there is an attempt by the judgment debtor, after he has satisfied an execution, to arrest the money in the hands of the sheriff, and thus delay the judgment creditor from receiving his debt. True it is, that the principal defendant has .by his default confessed the cause of action; and in this particular case, perhaps, there might be no inconvenience in admitting the sheriff to be trustee. But the law cannot bend to particular cases; and were we to decide, that the money made by the execution was a credit of the judgment creditor in the hands of the sheriff, before demand made on him, the same decis- [ * 320 ] ion must be had * in all cases; as well when the de mand of the attaching creditor was fictitious, as when it was bond fide and egal.

Let the trustee be discharged. 
      
       3 Mass. Rep. 289.