Case Name: WHITNEY v. MOORE
Court: Supreme Court of Pennsylvania
Jurisdiction: Pennsylvania
Decision Date: 1875-03-08
Citations: 3 Foster 1
Docket Number: 
Parties: WHITNEY v. MOORE.
Judges: 
Reporter: Legal Chronicle reports of Cases decided in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania (Foster)
Volume: 3
Pages: 1–2

Head Matter:
WHITNEY v. MOORE.
When a party defendant in a feigned issue under the interpleader act, purchases the property in dispute subsequent to the issue, the question of estoppel can only arise in an action on the interpleader bond, and the fact is not evidence on the trial of the feigned issue.
Error to the Court of Common Pleas of Schuylkill County.

Opinion:
Opinion delivered March 8th, 1875, by
Paxson, J.
The evidence referred to in the first assignment of error was erroneously admitted; the executions were issued some months after the feigned issue had been ordered and under them the leasehold and fixtures of the colliery has been levied upon as the property of William D. Moore, the plaintiff' in said issue. The landlord's warrant was still later in point of time and was issued against John H. Bracken. Whether the property purchased by Whitney at the sale was the identical property that has been levied upon under his two executions was a question of fact which even in the view taken by the court below of the effect of the constable's sale and purchase of the property thereat by Whitney, should have been submitted to the jury. There was some evidence that all of the articles specified in the narr. were not sold at the constable's sale, but the radical error was in the admission of this evidence for any purpose. It could throw no light upon the question of the ownership of the property at the time of the levy under the executions of Mr. Whitney. This was the single issue before the jury. The conduct of Mr. Whitney in purchasing the property at the constable's sale, may or may not estop him from recovering hereafter upon the interpleader bond in case of a verdict in his favor upon the feigned issue. This record raises no such question. For the present it is sufficient to say that the inquiry into what became of the property months after the issue was ordered was wholly irrelevant.
Judgment reversed and a venire facias de novo awarded.