Morning journal and courier., 1883-07-07
tSuurual 11r9 Colrisr.
s1NGLE COPIES THREE GENTS.
Saturday, July 2. 1883.
ATTACHMENT IN CIVIL PROCESS


 The State Bar Association held its annual dinner at Savin Rock yesterday. This asso- citation has served two good purposes since it's formation. It has halped to make the lawyers of the diiEszent counties better ac- quainted with each othsr and to promote fraternal feeling. And by giving the bar the opportunity for concefted action; it has brought about some excellent legal reforms. To 1t we owe the new Practice Act and the present method of Apposssing the Judges of the Superior court.
 Valuable as these reforms are they are of such sort that their value cannot be fully appreciated outside the bar. There are, how ever, some abuses in the practice of law in Connecticut which bear directly, and quite severely too, upon the people, and which seem somehow or other to have thus far es- capped the attention of the legal reformers. Perhaps the worst among these abuses is our system of attachment. In all the States out side of New England it is necessary for the plaintiff to get g judgment before he can levy upon the defendants property. In other words he must first establish his claim. In Connecticut the attachment is generally
 
 All that the plaintiff has to do in order to at- tach the defendants property is to go to awyer and get writ and put it in the sher- ifs hands. The sheriff holds the property un- til the cause is tried, unless the defendant can find somebody to give bonds. After the trial, if the plaintiff loses his cause, the de- fendant may have his property back, and can have no other compensation for it's detention than the satisfaction of beating the man who took it from him. A peculiar feature of the Connecticut practice is that partnership property may be attached and detained for the debt of one of the partners; that is, one or more innocent third parties, unless they can give bonds, must be deprived of their property until a cause is, decided in which they have no interest.
 All that is necessary to show that this sys- tenn of attachment is an outrage is to state the facts. The law simply gives to mans enemies or rivals the power to break up his business or destroy his credit on trumped-up claims. The worst feature of the system is the attachment of the body on civil process. The body of the defendant may be arrested in all suits for frauds or injuries, and the de- fendant unless he can give bonds for himself must go to jail and await the trial which is to determine whether or not he has wronged the plaintiff. In most of the States the plaintiff must go to court and show p1SnaG tacie case bsfere he can get an order for arrest But here he need only go to lawyer and pay him to draw writ containing allegations of fraud or injury. It is not necessary that anybody should swear to the truth of these allega- tions; if they state cass the arrest may be made at once. It is difficult to see how a shyster could be armed with ampler powers of extortion than those given him by the at- taehment laws of Connecticut.
 The remedies for the abuse of the process of attachment are so inadequate and so sell dom resorted to that they may be said to be I almost purely theoretical. But it is difficult \ to see how remedies for it's abuse can justify giving the power to one man of seizing an- others property or person before he has proved that he has any claim against him. We call the attention of the members of the ! State Bar association to this matter. It cer- tainly needs their attention quite as much as any of the abuses they have yet dealt with.