Case ID: or_14/html/0404-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Strahan, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

[Filed January 18, 1887.]
    J. DESPAIN et al. v. W. P. CROW et al.
    Garnishment oh Judgment Debtor.—Stare Decisis.—The doctrine announced in Norton v. Winter, 1 Or. 47, that a judgment debtor cannot be garnished by a creditor of the judgment creditor, adhered to upon the principle of stare decisis.
    
    Umatilla County. Defendants appeal.
    Affirmed.
    
      L. JB. Gox, for Appellants.
    
      G. W. Walher, for Respondents.
   Strahan, J.

This is an agreed case under the statute, and its sole purpose is to determine whether or not the defendant in a judgment can be garnished by a creditor of the plaintiff therein. The case has been argued with much learning and research by counsel on each side, and our attention has been drawn to the conflicting authorities; but the question was considered and settled at an early period of our judicial history, and we decline to reopen it. (Norton v. Winter, 1 Or. 47.) Courts will sometimes overrule their own decisions, where they plainly appear to have been wrong in principle, or where a correct principle has been improperly applied, but not where the authorities are simply in conflict. In such case, stare decisis applies with peculiar force.

Let the decree be affirmed.