Case ID: add_1/html/0268-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "President.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Ex parte William M'Donald, an insolvent debtor.
    Ross, for the plaintiff, in the suit on which M‘Donald was in custody, objected to the discharge of the prisoner; because he had not resided within this state two years next before his imprisonment.
    
      Pentecost, for the prisoner.
    The law was made to prevent inhabitants of another state from coming here and becoming resident in order to receive the benefit of the insolvent laws here, which perhaps they could not obtain in the state whence they came. But this prisoner was an inhabitant of Virginia, at the time of the arrest, and of the contract, and long before. He had, before his arrest here, been arrested for the same demand in Ohio county where he resided, and the suits there were discontinued, after his arrest here.
    
      1 St. L. 275.
    1 St. L. 275. See 2 St. L. 688-9. 3 St. L. 181, 472-3.
   President.

As the circumstances of this case carry no appearance of collusion, or fraud on the law, on the part of the prisoner, but rather of oppression by the plaintiff, we think it fair to construe the 4th section of the law of 1731, in the manner contended for by the prisoner’s counsel, and, of course, to consider the prisoner as not within the evil provided against, by that section.