Court Opinion

ID: 9451272
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:12:09.357415+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:32:38.564253
License: Public Domain

RIVES, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially):
The Alabama statute providing a right of trial as to personal property levied on under execution but claimed by a third person requires the execution of an affidavit and bond by the claimant, but also confers upon the claimant the right to have the property levied on delivered into his possession and casts upon the plaintiff in execution the burden of proof as to whether the property claimed is the property of the defendant in the writ and is liable to its satisfaction. Code of Alabama 1940, Tit. 7, sections 1168 and 1169. As is true generally,1 this statutory proceeding is supplementary or cumulative and the claimant may also resort to his ordinary remedies by a separate action at law in trespass, trover or detinue, or by suit in equity.2
To accord to the claimant the benefits of obtaining possession of the property, and of casting the burden of proof on the plaintiff in execution, and to avoid unnecessary or frivolous delays in the enforcement of lawful process, it is entirely reasonable for the statute to require a bond from the claimant. To claim that the requirements of a bond to maintain the statutory proceeding and the appellant’s inability to make that bond, deprive the appellant of her property without due process of law or deny her the equal protection of the laws does not, in my opinion, give rise to a substantial controversy as to the effect or construction of the Constitution, and is no more than a colorable attempt to give jurisdiction to the federal court.3 I, therefore, concur in the judgment of affirmance.

. Lassiter v. State, 1895, 106 Ala. 292, 17 So. 725, 726; First National Bank of Mobile v. Burch, 1939, 237 Ala. 680, 188 So. 859, 865.

. That a substantial controversy is required, see cases collected in footnote 36 to 28 U.S.C.A. § 1331.