Source: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/111/176/
Timestamp: 2019-04-21 06:48:43+00:00

Document:
The possession by a marshal of a court of the United States of property by virtue of a levy under a writ of execution issued upon a judgment recovered in a circuit court of the United States is a complete defense to an action in a state court of replevin of the property seized, without regard to its rightful ownership. Freeman v. Howe, 24 How. 450, affirmed and applied to the facts in this case. Krippendorf v. Hyde, 110 U. S. 276, affirmed. Buck v. Colbath, 3 Wall. 334, distinguished.
The principle that whenever property has been seized by an officer of the court by virtue of its process, the property is to be considered as in the custody of the court and under its control for the time being, applies both to a taking under a writ of attachment on mesne process and to a taking under a writ of execution.
The defendant in error was the plaintiff in the state court, and brought her action of replevin for the recovery of specific personal property to which she claimed title and which she alleged was wrongfully detained from her by the plaintiff in error. The defendant below was deputy marshal of the United States, and as such had possession of the property replevied by virtue of an execution issued upon a judgment of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Michigan against Adolph Heyman, having taken the same, by virtue of a levy under said execution as the property of the judgment debtor. Judgment was rendered in the supreme court of the state for the plaintiff below upon a finding in favor of her title to the property, reversing a judgment for the defendant below in the Circuit Court for the County of Dent. To reverse that judgment this writ of error was prosecuted.
The defendant in error was the plaintiff in the state court, and brought her action of replevin for the recovery of specific personal property, to which she claimed title, and which she alleges was wrongfully detained from her by the plaintiff in error. The defendant below was deputy marshal of the United States, and as such had possession of the property replevied by virtue of an execution issued upon a judgment of the Circuit Court of the United States for the Western District of Michigan against Adolph Heyman, having taken the same by virtue of a levy under said execution, as the property of the judgment debtor. Judgment was rendered in the supreme court of the state for the plaintiff below, upon a finding in favor of her title to the property, reversing a judgment for the defendant below in the Circuit Court for the County of Kent. To reverse that judgment this writ of error is prosecuted.
The sole question presented for our decision is whether it was error in the state court to permit a recovery of the possession of property thus held, against a marshal of the United States or his deputy, for the rightful owner, and whether, on the other hand, it should not have adjudged in favor of the defendant below that his possession of the property by virtue of the levy under the writ was in itself a complete defense to the action of replevin, without regard to the rightful ownership.
The case of Freeman v. Howe, 24 How. 450, was precisely like the present in its circumstances except that there, the process under which the marshal had seized and held the property replevied was an attachment according to the state practice in Massachusetts, being mesne process, directed, however, not against property specifically described, but commanding a levy, as in cases of fi. fa., upon the property of the defendant. Whether that difference is material is perhaps the only question to be considered, for the doctrine of that decision is too firmly established in this Court to be longer open to question. The proper answer to it will be found by an examination of the principles on which the judgment in that case proceeded, and of those cases which preceded and of others which have followed it.
"The main point there decided was that the property seized by the sheriff under the process of attachment from the state court, and while in the custody of the officer, could not be seized or taken from him by a process from the district court of the United States, and that the attempt to seize it by the marshal, by a notice or otherwise, was a nullity and gave the court no jurisdiction over it, inasmuch as to give jurisdiction to the district court, in a proceeding in rem, there must be a valid seizure and an actual control of the res under the process."
course of decision in the case of conflicting authorities under a state and federal process, and in order to avoid unseemly collision between them, the question as to which authority should for the time prevail did not depend upon the rights of the respective parties to the property seized, whether the one was paramount to the other, but upon the question which jurisdiction had first attached by the seizure and custody of the property under its process."
"for, the property having been seized under the process of attachment, and in the custody of the marshal, and the right to hold it being a question belonging to the federal court, under whose process it was seized, to determine, there was no authority, as we have seen, under the process of the state court to interfere with it."
"if a marshal of the United States under an execution in favor of the United States against A. should seize the person or property of B., then the state courts have jurisdiction to protect the person and the property so illegally invaded."
both civil and criminal cases, for in every case the question of jurisdiction could be made,"
"We need scarcely remark that no government could maintain the administration or execution of its laws, civil of criminal, if the jurisdiction of its judicial tribunals were subject to the determination of another."
To meet the objection that the party whose property had been wrongfully taken and withheld would be left without remedy, unless by virtue of citizenship he could sue in a federal court, the opinion then explains the remedy in such cases, by an ancillary proceeding in the court whose process has been made the instrument of the wrong -- a remedy the principle and procedure of which we had occasion we had occasion recently in the case of Krippendorf v. Hyde, 110 U. S. 276, to restate and reaffirm.
of enforcing the supremacy of the Constitution and laws of the United States.
"which is essential to the dignity and just authority of every court and to the comity which should regulate the relations between all courts of concurrent jurisdiction;"
"that whenever property has been seized by an officer of the court by virtue of its process, the property is to be considered as in the custody of the court and under its control for the time being, and that no other court has a right to interfere with that possession unless it be some court which may have a direct supervisory control over the court whose process has first taken possession or some superior jurisdiction in the premises."
writs of attachment and executions upon judgments, and that the principle embraces both, as indeed both are mentioned as belonging to the same class elsewhere in the opinion.
And there is nothing in the nature, office, or command of the two descriptions of process by which, so far as the question here involved is concerned, they can be distinguished. One is mesne process and the other final, but in the courts of the United States, the attachment cannot be used, as in the practice of other jurisdictions, as means of compelling the appearance of the defendant or of founding jurisdiction as a proceeding in rem. Both alike command the seizure of the property of the defendant without a specific description, and in obeying the precept the officer exercises precisely the same discretion, and with the same consequences if he commits a wrong under color of it. The court has the same control over both forms of its process, and has custody of the property seized by virtue of them in the same sense. The circumstance that as to property held under an attachment, the final judgment may direct its sale, while the execution is issued upon the praecipe of the party, and is executed without further order, cannot alter the relation of the court either to the officer or the property. It has jurisdiction over the latter to meet and satisfy the exigency of either writ, and that jurisdiction can be maintained only by retaining the possession acquired by the officer in executing it. A third person, a stranger to the suit and claiming as owner, may prosecute his right to restitution in either case in the same methods as pointed out in Krippendorf v. Hyde, supra, or he may pursue his remedy for damages against the officer, either personally for the trespass, as in Buck v. Colbath, supra, or for the breach of his official duty, upon his bond and against his sureties, as in the case of Lammon v. Feusier, ante, p. 111 U. S. 17.
"Had the property remained in the possession of the sheriff under the first levy, it is clear the marshal could not have taken it in execution, for the property could not be subject to two jurisdictions at the same time. The first levy, whether it were made under the federal or state authority, withdraws the property from the reach of the process of the other. . . . A most injurious conflict of jurisdiction would be likely often to arise between the federal and state courts if the final process of the one could be levied on property which had been taken by the process of the other. The marshal or the sheriff, as the case may be, by a levy, acquires a special property in the goods, and may maintain an action for them. But if the same goods may be taken in execution at the same time by the marshal and the sheriff, does this special property vest in the one, or the other, or both of them? No such case can exist; property once levied on remains in the custody of the law, and it is not liable to be taken by another execution in the hands of a different officer, and especially by an officer acting under a different jurisdiction."
That which cannot be done by final process is equally out of the reach of original or mesne process.
"is not exhausted by the rendition of its judgment, but continues until that judgment shall be satisfied. Many questions arise on the process, subsequent to the judgment, in which jurisdiction is to be exercised."
Wayman v. Southard, 10 Wheat. 1.
"that the sphere of action appropriated to the United States is as far beyond the reach of the judicial process issued by a state judge or a state court as if the line of division was traced by landmarks and monuments visible to the eye."
"But after the return is made and the state judge or court judicially apprised that the party is in custody under the authority of the United States, they can proceed no further. They then know that the prisoner is within the dominion and jurisdiction of another government and that neither the writ of habeas corpus nor any other process issued under state authority can pass over the line of division between the two sovereignties. He is then within the dominion and exclusive jurisdiction of the United States. If he has committed an offense against their laws, their tribunals alone can punish him. If he is wrongfully imprisoned, their judicial tribunals can release him and afford him redress. . . . No judicial process, whatever form it may assume, can have any lawful authority outside of the limits of the jurisdiction of the court or judge by whom it is issued, and any attempt to enforce it beyond these boundaries is nothing less then lawless violence."
supra, MR. JUSTICE FIELD points out that it was not intended merely to meet cases where the authority of the United States was undisputed, but cases where its validity was questioned and it appeared that the prisoner was held under claim and color of such authority, in good faith, and not by way of mere pretense and imposition. And the exclusive authority of the court issuing the writ extends not only to the decisions of all questions affecting its jurisdiction, and the form and force of the writ itself, and the validity of the proceeding in issuing and executing it, but also of all questions affecting the identity of the person or property seized and held under color of its authority, and the right to exempt them from its operation. It does not avail, therefore, to say that as the writ commands the officer to take the property of the defendant, he cannot under that claim to take and hold the property of another, because the property which he does actually take he takes and holds as the property of the defendant, claiming it to be such, and therefore he has it in his possession under color of process and claim of right.
"the taking of the attachable property of the person named in the writ is rightful, the taking of the property of another person is wrongful; but each being done by the marshal in executing the writ in his hands, is an attempt to perform his official duty, and is an official act."

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