Case ID: va_14/html/0941-02.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Bj' the Chancellor.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

Lane v. Lane, and Lane v. Lane.
    Spring Vacation,
    1809.
    Attachment for Not Performing Decree of Court — Exe= cution. — In what manner an attachment for not performing any order or decree of this Court, ought to be executed.
    These were cross bills for the settlement and division of the estate of the testator.
    The executor had been ordered to account before certain Commissioners, which he had iailed to do, and an attachment had been ordered against him. The attachment was returned executed; but the executor was going at large, and now came into Court and moved to discharge the attachment; and the plaintiffs in the first suit submitted to the Court the course to be taken.
    
      
       See monographic, note on “Attachments” appended to .Lancaster y. Wilson. 27 Gratt. 624.
    
   Bj' the Chancellor.

The law is, that every person taken by an attachment for not performing any order or decree of this Court, shall be committed to the gaol of the county where the attachment is executed, and thereupon a writ of habeas corpus may be moved for, to bring up his body, if in custody, or if not, then the Serjeant of the Court may be sent to bring him, that he may be committed ; but if the return upon the attachment be non est inventus, it is then proper to move for an attachment with proclamations, which if also returned non est in-ventus, a commission of rebellion may issue, as was done in this *Court in the case of Purcel against Purcel. In the case before the Court, the executor is at large upon the return of cepi corpus, and if he was brought up by the Serjeant of the Court, the course would be to commit him until he should clear his contempt; that is to say, until the Court could be satisfied that its order would be obeyed. This would be the regular course of proceeding, but attended with more inconvenience, than the mode that was adopted by this Court in the case of Fisher against Pisher, the effect of which is the same; and therefore the Court would prefer that mode now: and an order was made to this effect; that if the said executor do, on or before the tenth day of August next, comply with the terms of the decretal order pronounced in this cause, the 13th September, 1805, to the satisfaction of the Commissioners therein named, to be certified to this Court, the said attachment is to be discharged as an act of this day; but if the said Commissioners should certify to this Court, that the said executor had failed to comply with the said decretal mode in manner aforesaid, then it is ordered, that the Sheriff of the county of Boudon do commit the said executor to the gaol of the said county, until the Judge of this Court, in Court or out of Court, is satisfied that the said executor hath fully complied with the said decretal order, and shall order him to be discharged.