Court Opinion

ID: 9723903
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-26 10:37:40.922355+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:24:53.228141
License: Public Domain

J. SHELLY WRIGHT, Circuit Judge
(dissenting):
This is a class action for declaratory and injunctive relief brought in the District Court against the clerk of the Civil Division of the District of Columbia Court of General Sessions and Household Finance Corporation of Suitland, Maryland. The plaintiff and those she represents are wage earners who reside outside of and are employed within the District of Columbia and who are therefore subject to the District’s prejudgment garnishment provisions, 16 D. C.Code § 501 et seq. (1967). Defendant Household Finance Corporation has an action on an alleged breach of contract pending against plaintiff in the Court of General Sessions and has secured a writ of attachment before judgment currently outstanding against plaintiff’s employer. Plaintiff contends that the District’s prejudgment garnishment provisions are unconstitutional under the Fifth Amendment and Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 395 U.S. 337, 89 S.Ct. 1820, 23 L.Ed.2d 349 (1969). Her standing to challenge the District of Columbia provisions comes from the fact that under their authority she has been deprived, and continues to be deprived, of a portion of her wages, pursuant to Household Finance’s suit. Because the prejudgment garnishment provisions found unconstitutional in Sniadach differ from the District’s provisions in several material respects, we must first understand the basis for and reach of the Sniadach holding before determining its application, if any, to this case.
In Sniadach, the Family Finance Corporation of Bay View, acting pursuant to a Wisconsin statute, filed with the clerk of the court a complaint in garnishment alleging a claim of $420 on a promissory note. The clerk then issued a garnishee summons, directing Mrs. Sniadach’s employer to pay her only a statutory subsistence amount and to retain the remainder of the wages owed her until further order of the court. Mrs. Sniadach moved to dismiss these garnishment proceedings because notice and an opportunity to be heard were not given before the in rem seizure of her wages, in violation of due process requirements. The Supreme Court of Wisconsin rejected her argument, noting that Mrs. Sniadach had not lost legal title to her wages and finding that the temporary loss of the use of part of her regular wages was a de minimis inconvenience not reached by the Fourteenth Amendment. Family Finance Corp. of Bayview v. Sniadach, 37 Wis.2d 163, 154 N.W.2d 259 (1967). In an opinion by Mr. Justice Douglas, the United States Supreme Court, by a seven to one majority, reversed and held the Wisconsin statute unconstitutional.
It is, of course, generally accepted as fundamental to procedural due process that a person be afforded “notice and an opportunity to be heard” before he may be deprived of life, liberty or property. Although the Supreme Court has occasionally sustained a conditional prejudgment deprivation of a constitutionally protected right pending the outcome of the case, it has usually done so only in cases involving some compelling public *573interest.1 The respondents in Sniadach tried to make out such a public interest, arguing that the importance to the state of reliable debt collection by general creditors justified pretrial wage garnishment by summary process. But the Court focused instead upon the abuses of and hardship caused by wage garnishment and found that the damage to individual debtors in cases involving unjustifiable or fraudulent claims clearly outweighed any legitimate state interest in allowing creditors summary process.
Noting that wages are a “specialized type of property presenting distinct problems in our economic system,” 395 U.S. at 340, 89 S.Ct. at 1822, the Sniadach Court described the evil effects of prejudgment garnishment as follows:
“ * * * What happens in Wisconsin is that the clerk of the court issues the summons at the request of the creditor’s lawyer; and it is the latter who by serving the garnishee sets in motion the machinery whereby the wages are frozen. They may, it is true, be unfrozen if the trial of the main suit is ever had and the wage earner wins on the merits. But in the interim the wage earner is deprived of his enjoyment of earned wages without any opportunity to be heard and to tender any defense he may have, whether it be fraud or otherwise.
* * * * * -x-
“Recent investigations of the problem have disclosed the grave injustices made possible by prejudgment garnishment whereby the sole opportunity to be heard comes after the taking. Congressman Sullivan, Chairman of the House Subcommittee on Consumer Affairs who held extensive hearings on this and related problems stated:
‘What we know from our study of this problem is that in a vast number of cases the debt is a fraudulent one, saddled on a poor ignorant person who is trapped in any easy credit nightmare, in which he is charged double for something he could not pay for even if the proper price was called for, and then hounded into giving up his pound of flesh, and being fired besides.' 114 Cong.Rec. 1832.
“The leverage of the creditor on the wage earner is enormous. The creditor tenders not only the original debt but the ‘collection fees’ incurred by his attorneys in the garnishment proceedings:
‘The debtor whose wages are tied up by a writ of garnishment, and who is usually in need of money, is in no position to resist demands for collection fees. If the debt is small, the debtor will be under considerable pressure to pay the debt and collection charges in order to get his wages back; If the debt is large, he will often sign a new contract of “payment schedule” which incorporates these additional charges.’
“Apart from those collateral consequences, it appears that in Wisconsin the statutory exemption granted the wage earner is ‘generally insufficient to support the debtor for any one week.’
“The result is that a prejudgment garnishment of the Wisconsin type may as a practical matter drive a wage-earning family to the wall. Where the taking of one’s property is so obvious, it needs no extended argument to conclude that absent notice and a prior hearing (cf. Coe v. Armour Fertilizer Works, 237 U.S. 413, 423 [35 S.Ct. 625, 628, 59 L.Ed. 1027] this prejudgment garnishment procedure *574violates the fundamental principles of due process.”
395 U.S. at 338-342, 89 S.Ct. at 1821-1822. (Footnotes omitted.) 2
*575Defendants argue that the holding of Sniadach is inapplicable to the facts of our case on two separate grounds: first, because the Wisconsin provisions permitted prejudgment garnishment of wages of all residents, while the challenged District provision applies only to nonresidents 3; and second, because the Wisconsin provisions allowed garnishment pending outcome of the litigation without notice and opportunity to be heard, whereas the District statute entitles a debtor in a garnishment action to file affidavits traversing those of the plaintiff and to have the sufficiency of the plaintiff’s justification tested in court shortly after attachment, with the possibility that the writ may be quashed.
Taking the second and less impressive of defendants’ contentions first, it is clear that 16 D.C.Code § 506 does not satisfy the requirements of notice and prior hearing as defined in the majority and concurring opinions of Sniadach. Section 506 reads:
“If the defendant files affidavits traversing the affidavits filed by the plaintiff the court shall determine whether the facts set forth in the plaintiff’s affidavits as ground for issuing the attachment are true, and whether there was just ground for issuing the attachment. When, in the opinion of the court, the proofs do not sustain the affidavit of the plaintiff, his agent, or attorney, the court shall quash the writ of attachment. This issue may be tried by the court or a judge at chambers after three days’ notice. The issue may be tried as well upon oral testimony as upon affidavits. If the court deems it expedient, a jury may be impaneled to try the issue.”
Although this language is sufficiently ambiguous on its face to be read as providing for notice and hearing which satisfy the requirements of' Sniadach, the case law gloss on Section 506 proves the contrary. As stated in Morfessis v. Thomas, D.C.Mun.App., 91 A.2d 883, 836 (1952): “The defendant may deny by affidavit the specific grounds alleged by the plaintiff to entitle him to the attachment, e. g., if non-residence is alleged he may contradict it, as this applies solely to the remedy, not to the right of action. It is not permissible for the defendant, by a motion to quash an attachment, to show that the debt is not due or that the amount claimed by plaintiff is unconscionable or unreasonable; nor upon such a motion can the nature, validity, or justice of the cause of action sued on be inquired into. This would be to try in a summary and collateral way the main issue in the case.” 4 Thus Section 506 clearly fails to meet the requirements of Sniadach because it provides for a hearing which comes after the attachment. Even then the hearing tests only procedural regularity. What Sniadach clearly requires is a hearing before the taking of wages which goes to the merits of the claimed debt.5
*576Although defendants’ attempt to distinguish our case from Sniadach on the basis of the different kinds of hearings provided for by the relevant statutes can be easily rejected, their other contention, based on the nonresidency provision of the District statute, requires more rigorous analysis. While stating clearly that a full hearing on the merits before garnishment was required by the Fifth Amendment under the facts of Sniadach, the Supreme Court was careful to limit its holding to the specific controversy before it, and to note that “summary procedure may well meet the requirements of due process in extraordinary situations.” 395 U.S. at 339, 89 S.Ct. at 1821. Once it is decided that the District provision for a hearing upon a traverse of affidavits does not meet the standards for a proper hearing required by the Supreme Court for a Sniadach fact situation, the narrow issue in our present case is whether Mrs. Tucker’s situation is covered by the Sniadach ruling, or whether it is instead beyond the reach of Sniadach because the need to protect a state or creditor interest against nonresidents, who may seek to escape judgment creates in all cases “an extraordinary situation” which justifies the use of summary process.
In seeking to resolve this issue, I note first that the cases cited by Mr. Justice Douglas in support of the proposition that summary procedure may well meet the requirements of due process in “extraordinary situations” almost all involve actions of a public agency. Thus, for example, in Fahey v. Mallonee, 332 U.S. 245, 67 S.Ct. 1552, 91 L.Ed. 2030 (1947), the Supreme Court upheld the power of the Federal Home Loan Bank to appoint a conservator to supervise a savings and loan association whose operation it deemed injurious to interests of depositors, creditors and the public prior to any hearing. The rationale is that were a hearing to precede takeover, public confidence in the institution might be shaken, causing a run on the association’s funds and making it impossible to preserve credit during the period of a hearing. Similar policy considerations support the decision of the Supreme Court in Coffin Brothers & Co. v. Bennett, 277 U.S. 29, 48 S.Ct. 422, 72 L.Ed. 768 (1928), which allowed a state bank official assigned to liquidate and pay claims of a failed bank to attach in order to satisfy stockholder liability assessments due the bank. In Ewing v. Mytinger & Casselberry, Inc., 339 U.S. 594, 70 S.Ct. 870, 94 L.Ed. 1088 (1950), the Supreme Court upheld a federal statute which authorized the Administrator of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to order seizure of misbranded drugs without prior hearing if he determined they were adulterated or advertised in a manner likely to mislead the consumer as to their value. If seizures of such articles were delayed until after a hearing on the merits, the Court reasoned, many people could be defrauded and/or injured by consumption of the product.
*577In addition to these three cases — in all of which administrative action by an agency of the state was said to justify summary procedure — both the majority opinion and the concurrence in Sniadach also cite Ownbey v. Morgan, 256 U.S. 94, 41 S.Ct. 433, 65 L.Ed. 837 (1921), which concerned attachment of property of a nonresident debtor by a resident creditor upon refusal of the debtor to post a bond in the amount of the creditor’s claim before defending. Such seizure, commonly allowed, has its roots in the need for a state to protect the interests of its own citizens in obligations owed them by nonresidents.6
Although defendants argue that our present case is like Ownbey and presents an “extraordinary situation” in which summary procedure will meet the requirements of due process, I am persuaded of precisely the opposite. Defendants place great stress on the fact that plaintiff is a nonresident, and it is true that Ownbey endorses the right of a state to protect itself against the attempts of nonresidents to escape obligations owed to its own citizens. But our own case is so far from an Ownbey as to make a mockery of this comparison. In the first place, our case grows out of a suit by Household Finance, a Maryland company, against plaintiff, the guarantor of a note, who is also a Maryland resident. The sole reason why this action was brought in a District of Columbia court — as counsel for Household Finance were frank to admit in oral argument — was to take advantage of the District’s prejudgment garnishment provisions, since Maryland’s prejudgment garnishment law, like the District’s, is not available against residents. At a minimum such forum-shopping, especially in an action in which neither party resides in our jurisdiction, should be discouraged.
But the mere disinclination to entertain forum-shopped litigation permitting seizure of a woman’s salary is not the basis for this dissent. Beyond considerations of policy is the manifest unconstitutionality of the District's prejudgment garnishment provisions when applied to Mrs. Tucker. Due process must deal in realities, not rules. And what is absolutely clear from a reading of Ownbey and Sniadach is that “nonresidency” will be a factor justifying a rule of summary procedure only insofar as it is a reliable indicator that the debtor may otherwise be able to escape his legal obligations. The reality which creates an “extraordinary situation” and which justifies the summary procedure of prejudgment garnishment is the unavailability of the debtor for personal service — in this case in the District. Such is the clear meaning of that part of the Court’s opinion in Sniadach which, after citing the cases discussed in text above, goes on to say:
“ * * * But in the present case no situation requiring special protection to a state or creditor interest is pre*578seated by the facts; nor is the Wisconsin statute narrowly drawn to meet any such unusual condition. Petitioner was a resident of this Wisconsin community and in personam jurisdiction was readily obtainable.”
395 U.S. at 337, 89 S.Ct. at 1821.
The plaintiff in our case, although she lives in Maryland, is regularly employed by Government Services, Incorporated in Washington, D. C., and is thus regularly available for service at her place of employment within the District. Indeed, she was served there in the Court of General Sessions suit out of which the garnishment arose. I believe the District’s prejudgment provision is unconstitutional as applied to her. I base this belief on Sniadach, which I read as holding that where, as here, á party is readily available to in personam service of process within the court’s jurisdiction, the summary taking or suspension of her wages without a hearing oh the merits of the underlying claim violates due process of law. A careful reading of recent case law — while not entirely decisive — strong(ly supports my position.
Since the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Sniadach, a number of state supreme courts have held their own jurisdictions’ prejudgment garnishment statutes unconstitutional, primarily because of infirmities in the hearings provided for. See, e. g., Termplan, Inc. v. Superior Court of Maricopa County, 105 Ariz. 270, 463 P.2d 68 (1969); Cline v. Credit Bureau of Santa Clara Valley, 1 Cal.3d 908, 83 Cal.Rptr. 669, 464 P.2d 125 (1970); McCallop v. Carberry, 1 Cal.3d 903, 83 Cal.Rptr. 666, 464 P.2d 122 (1970); Jones Press, Inc. v. Motor Travel Services Inc., Minn., 176 N.W.2d 87 (1970). A reading of garnishment cases since Sniadach has led me to only one case outside our own jurisdiction which specifically addresses the question whether nonresidency of the debtor, without more, constitutes an extraordinary situation within the meaning of Sniadach. Mills v. Bartlett, Del.Super., 265 A.2d 39 (1970), holds that, to the extent that Delaware foreign attachment statutes permit prejudgment garnishment of wages due and owing to a nonresident defendant without notice and hearing, they violate due process.7
Within the District of Columbia Court of General Sessions, I find a split of opinion on this problem. Judge Beard has held in City Finance Co. of Mount Ranier, Inc. v. Joseph Williams, General Sessions No. 23497-67, June 18, 1969, 3 CCH Consumer Credit Guide ¶ 99,893, that “the Sniadach opinion is of little or no impact upon the propriety of the attachment before judgment procedure selected and adopted by Congress which provides quite reasonable protections for creditors in those extraordinary situations in which a delay of attachment until after judgment will produce only moral vindication for the plaintiff at the expense of continuing economic inequity between the parties.” In giving a clean bill of health to the District’s prejudgment garnishment provisions, Judge Beard placed great stress on the fact that they are narrowly drawn to permit garnishment of wages only of either nonresidents or those who intend to escape the judgment of the court. What he failed to realize, however, is that the category of “nonresidents” is still unconstitutionally overbroad, given the narrow purpose for which it was created. Not unexpectedly, this opinion has been strongly criticized in the scholarly reviews.8
*579There is, however, a still more recent opinion from the Court of General Sessions which I believe expresses a much sounder view of the constitutionality of our District prejudgment garnishment provisions. In Department of Labor Federal Credit Union v. Henry H. Raynor, General Sessions No. 2355-70, September 2, 1970, Judge Belson permitted garnishment of the back wages of former government employees, both of whom had left this jurisdiction and taken up residence in North Carolina before completing payment of a debt owed to a local credit union. Judge Belson found that the District provisions were constitutionally applied to these particular debtors because they were not available for in personam service and because garnishment was necessary to insure full payment of their debt, provided it proved to be legally incurred. But the court was also prompt to note that this result was reached despite its realization that
“in a substantial number of instances, very possibly the majority of such cases, this Court’s prejudgment attachment procedures are utilized in situations which do not merit special protection as that term is used in Sniadach.
“District of Columbia Code Section 16-501(d) (1), adopted long before Sniadach, subjects all nonresidents to summary prejudgment attachment; and no attempt was made to frame the statute so narrowly as to include within its sweep only nonresidents in special situations. It is a matter of common knowledge that tens of thousands of wage earners are employed daily in the District of Columbia but reside in nearby Maryland or Virginia. All such persons are subject to prejudgment attachment of their wages. Furthermore, it is notorious that the broad garnishment procedures of this jurisdiction are utilized frequently by non*580resident plaintiffs against nonresident defendants in cases where the only-connection between this jurisdiction and the cause is that the defendant’s employer does business in and is amenable to suit in the District of Columbia. It is regrettably true also that District of Columbia attachments are sometimes resorted to for the sole purpose of circumventing the wage exemption laws of other jurisdictions which protect wage earners who live and work there. * * *
“In the foregoing and other situations not presented by this case, it would appear that the procedures followed by this Court do not meet the requisites of due process enunciated in Sniadach. Until that situation is remedied, it would appear that the proper course for this Court will be to reject challenges to writs of attachment before judgment in cases of this type only where the Court is convinced, as it is in this case, that it has before it a special situation which justifies the .use of the procedures currently in force. * * *”
(Citations and footnote omitted.)
A survey of law review commentaries since the Supreme Court decision in Sniadach indicates that scholarly opinion is virtually unanimously in favor of the position that availability to personal service and not mere nonresidency is the touchstone in determining due process in the circumstances of this case. See, e. g., Note, Attachment in California: A New Look at an Old Writ, 22 Stan.L.Rev. 1254 (1970); Note, The Constitutional Validity of Attachment in Light of Sniadach v. Family Finance Corp., 17 U.C. L.A.L.Rev. 837 (1970); Note, Garnishment Statutes and Due Process: The Effect of Sniadach v. Family Finance Corporation, 7 Harv.J. on Legis. 231 (1970); Note, Law and Poverty; Summary Prejudgment Wage Garnishment Held Unconstitutional, 1969 Duke L.J. 1285; Note, The Supreme Court, 1968 Term, 83 Harv.L.Rev. 7,113-118 (1969); Note, Constitutional Law — Due Process — Prior Hearing in Wage Garnishment, 1970 Wis.L.Rev. 181. The journals suggest that the real teaching of Sniadach is that wage garnishment prior to judgment may constitutionally be resorted to only upon a showing that all other efforts to obtain in personam, jurisdiction and to protect a subsequent judgment have failed.9
It is notorious but true, as the Supreme Court found in Sniadach and as Judge *581Belson found in the District of Columbia, that prejudgment garnishment of wages is often used not to protect the creditor’s claim — garnishment after judgment can do that — but to deprive the wage-earning “debtor” of his day in court. People who need their wages to live on arrange to pay the claim, irrespective of its validity, in order to lift the garnishment. It is also notorious and unfortunately true that too often the “debt” which provides the basis for the garnishment “ ‘is a fraudulent one, saddled on a poor ignorant person who is trapped in an easy credit nightmare, in which he is charged double for something he could not pay for even if the proper price was called for * * ” Sniadach, supra, 395 U.S. at 341, 89 S.Ct. at 1822.10
I respectfully dissent.11

. See, e. g., Goldberg v. Kelly, 397 U.S. 254, 90 S.Ct. 1011, 25 L.Ed.2d 287 (1970). As tlie lower court stated: “[T]he issue is not whether a specific termination was proper, but whether the procedures used were justifiable. * * * Suffice it to say that to cut off a welfare recipient in the face of * * * ‘brutal need’ without a prior hearing of some sort is unconscionable, unless overwhelming considerations justify it.” Kelly v. Wyman, S.D.N.Y., 294 F.Supp. 893, 900 (1968).

. Although recent federal legislation (82 Stat. 146, Act of May 29, 1968) forbids discharge of employees on grounds that their wages have been garnished, law review commentaries on the Sniadach opinion continue to stress the other pressures which prejudgment garnishment puts on the poor debtor and to muster an impressive array of evidence to counter the notion that such garnishment constitutes only a “minor” and “temporary” taking which does not raise serious due process problems. Thus, for example:
“ * * * Rather than lose his wage or, what is worse, the job that is his sole means of supporting his family, [the debtor] will accede to the creditor’s demand for a new, more costly repayment schedule, or resort to personal bankruptcy. Thus, if a hearing does not occur before garnishment is allowed, it will probably never occur,- and fraudulent claims will not be contested. The overwhelming factual probability that a pre-trial garnishment will not be subject to judicial scrutiny was demonstrated by a recent empirical study in Los Angeles County; 97 percent of the cases in which garnishment was used never went to trial. ‘Temporary’ seizures are in this manner changed to permanent takings without a judicial determination of the validity of the claim which is the basis of the taking.”
17 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 837, 840 (1970), citing Western Center on Law and Poverty, Impact and Extent of Wage Garnishment in Los Angeles County 39, 114 (1968). (Footnotes omitted.)
A study by a State of Washington district court judge found that not one of the 227 prejudgment garnishments filed during the study period actually went to trial. Patterson, Foreword: Wage Garnishment — An Extraordinary Remedy Run Amuck, 43 Wash.L.Rev. 735, 735-736, 738 & n. 7 (1968).
Besides attacking the notion that prejudgment garnishment entails only a temporary and de minimis taking not within the purview of the Fifth Amendment, the law review commentaries also criticize one of the basic rationales of garnishment— the assumption that it is necessary to protect the creditor’s interests against debtors who will flee the jurisdiction of the court to escape its judgment. As one review states it:
“Attachment is used primarily as a step in the collection process by retail merchants against wage-earning, low income credit customers. Profiles of the average debtor subject to attachment indicate that he has lived in the same area for a long time and has a steady record of employment; payment on his obligations has generally lapsed because of illness, loss of work, pressure of other debts, or a belief in creditor fraud. Thus, available information indicates that these debtors are not the kind of people who are likely to attempt to frustrate judgment on notice of suit. Consequently, attachment should be unnecessary.”
17 U.C.L.A.L.Rev. 837, 845-846 (1970). (Footnotes omitted.) According to one study, the average debtor attached has lived in the same city for over 20 years. Eighty per cent of such debtors attend church regularly. Nearly two thirds voted in the last presidential election, 61% of payment lapses were attributed to illness, loss of work or pressure of other debts; 16% were based on a belief in creditor fraud. Western Center on Law and Poverty, Impact and Extent of Wage Garnishment in Los Angeles County 11 (1968).
Finally, the reviews cast doubt on the oft discussed policy argument that to do away with prejudgment garnishment will hurt the poor rather than help them, because creditors will not lend money without this protection. Empirical studies have examined the effect which elimination of wage garnishment, both before and after judgment, has on credit availability, but not the effect which purely pretrial remedies have. Elimination of wage garnishment in Texas apparently did affect credit adversely, while restriction of garnishment through higher exemption in New York did not. See Brunn, Wage Garnishment in California: A Study and Recommendations, 53 Calif.L.Rev. 1214, 1239-1243 (1965) ; Comment, Wage Garnishment in Washington — An Empirical Study, 43 Wash.L.Rev. 743, 760-761 (1968).
“There is also no reason to believe that attachment has any necessary effect on the availability of credit. Available credit would be restricted only if the creditor granted or denied a loan on the basis of the availability of attachment. But in the general consumer debt case, ultimate collectibility does not depend on attachment, but on execution levies. The law makes obtaining a judgment easy, and most collection suits are quickly reduced to judgment. Often no *575more than the statutory ten days elapse between summons and judgment. In addition, the stability of the average debtor makes him amenable to execution levy. Depriving the general creditor of the right to attach, absent special circumstances, thus takes from him a means of coercing payment, but it does not impair ultimate and speedy collectibility of a debt.”
17 U.C.L.A.Rev. 837, 846 (1970). (Footnotes omitted.)

. In this suit, plaintiff challenges only that part of the District provision which authorizes prejudgment garnishment for all nonresidents. The other situations in which the provision is designed to apply are more narrowly drawn and may well be the kind of “extraordinary situations” excepted from the holding of Sniadach— e. g., when the alleged debtor is a foreign corporation, or has been absent from the District for at least six months, or is evading service of process by concealment or withdrawal from the jurisdiction, or has or is about to dispose of or secrete his property with intent to evade ordinary process, or has contracted the debt or incurred the obligation fraudulently. 16 D.C.Code § 501(d) (1967).

. Applied as holding in National Brick & Supply Co. v. Bradshaw, D.C.Mun. App., 91 A.2d 838 (1952).

. See, e. g., 83 Harv.L.Rev. 7, 115 (1969) :
“The Sniadach opinion was more an indignant response to an existing prac*576tice than a delineation of the proper procedure for garnishment. For example, the Court left unanswered the question whether the required prior hearing must be a full trial culminating in judgment or whether a less complete hearing merely to establish that the claim of debt has some substance would suffice. Mr. Justice Harlan’s concurring opinion contains language which may suggest that the latter is all the Court would require, but there is no indication that the majority would have shared such a view. In fact, the majority’s opinion seems to be incompatible with any requirement short of a full determination on the merits before garnishment. A partial hearing would weed out the most outrageous claims, but those subjected to the hardship of garnishment and the pressure to settle would still include defendants whose defenses would prove meritorious at a final proceeding. Any net decrease in hardship created by the procedure would not change the balance of interests, since the Court seemed to find no need at all for garnishment prior to hearing under ordinary circumstances. A partial hearing would only increase the burden on court dockets with little resulting social benefit.”
(Footnote omitted.)

. Until Sniadach, the United States Supreme Court had not reviewed prejudgment garnishment, but in McKay v. McInnes, 279 U.S. 820, 49 S.Ct. 344, 73 L.Ed. 975 (1929), it had summarily affirmed the constitutionality of a Maine statute permitting prejudgment attachment without posting of bond or presentment of an affidavit. The Maine Supreme Court ruled the attachment procedure itself fulfilled the notice requirement of due process, while the opportunity to be heard was provided in the trial of the principal action. Since the lien was only temporary, and thus a provisional remedy, the Maine court held that the deprivation involved was not an unconstitutional taking. In Sniadach, the United states Supreme Court distinguished McInnes as involving “a procedural rule * * * for attachments in general.” 395. U.S. at 340, 89 S.Ct. at 1822. Wage garnishment, the Court said, involved a “specialized type of property presenting distinct problems in our economic system.” Ibid. In his concurrence, Mr. Justice Harlan expressly discounts the significance of a per ctiriam opinion like McInnes and indicates that the deprivation of any “unrestricted use” of property amounts to actual deprivation. I note suggestions in all of the law review commentaries that the rationale of Sniadach would seem to be applicable to many forms of prejudgment attachment in addition to prejudgment garnishment.

. The problem with this case is that it may go too far. Prejudgment garnishment of the wages of a nonresident debtor who is not available for personal service in the jurisdiction of the creditor may well be covered by the extraordinary-situation exception of Sniadach. At any rate, our case is easier, involving as it does a nonresident who was easily and regularly available for personal service.

. See, e. fir., 7 Harv.J. on Legis. 231, 235-236 (1970):
“Garnishment is a device which has been employed to gain jurisdiction over persons in lieu of personal service. The continued viability of the use of wage garnishment to obtain jurisdiction over absent defendants is in doubt. After mentioning that summary procedures may meet the requirements of due *579process in extraordinary situations, the Court noted that Mrs. Sniadach was a domiciliary of Wisconsin and therefore the Wisconsin state courts had personal jurisdiction over her. This raises a possible negative implication that wage garnishments directed at non-residents who might not otherwise be subject to the jurisdiction of the court are constitutional. However, the hardships of wage garnishment emphasized by Mr. Justice Douglas are suffered equally by defendants who live inside and outside the state, and a non-resident defendant may be additionally burdened if he is forced to defend a suit far away from his home. Therefore, if the rationale of the Court’s decision is that there cannot be prejudgment garnishment of property if that garnishment will result in undue hardship for the defendant, there would be no distinction between garnishment against in-state and out-of-state wage-earners: both kinds of garnishment would be impermissible. Moreover, in some situations garnishment in a remote jurisdiction has been used to evade exemptions provided in the wage-earner’s home state, and such garnishments may be brought to harass the debtor by imposing on him needless expense. Nevertheless, a District of Columbia court has interpreted Sniadach narrowly and has allowed prejudgment garnishment of wages held by a District of Columbia employer where the defendant was a resident of Virginia but worked in the District of Columbia, despite the fact that the only immediate hearing available to the defendant permitted challenges to the grounds for attachment but did not permit challenges to the merits of the plaintiff’s claim.
“There are no compelling policy reasons for distinguishing between garnishment of in-state and out-of-state wage-earners in order to protect the creditors’ interest in bringing absent defendants within the jurisdiction of the court: a logical extension of Sniadach would strike down both types of garnishment. In situations where the plaintiff is seeking jurisdiction over a non-resident defendant by garnishing the defendant’s employer in the plaintiff’s home state, the case where such garnishment is the only method of obtaining jurisdiction over the defendant will be rare. The plaintiff in City Finance who was suing a defendant who resided in Virginia but whose employer was located in the District of Columbia did not have to garnish the defendant’s wages to obtain jurisdiction over the defendant in the District of Columbia. The plaintiff could have served the defendant personally when he appeared in the District of Columbia at his job.”
(Footnotes omitted.)

. As the Harvard Law Review put it:
“ * * * The Court, after denying that special need existed in Sniadach, mentioned that in personam jurisdiction might readily have been obtained by the creditor; this indicates that a valid use of prejudgment garnishment is to meet a need for quasi in rem jurisdiction. State statutes and the historical origin of attachment suggest an additional proper use: to prevent the defendant from fleeing or fraudulently conveying his property. A real need for quasi in rem jurisdiction would likely occur only when neither the creditor’s residence nor his place of business is the same as the home or job location of the debtor so that in personam jurisdiction would not be readily available. Since, however, the employee’s wages can be the basis of quasi in rem jurisdiction in any state in which the employer can be served, creditors might attempt to take advantage of quasi in rem jurisdiction by choosing when possible to sue in a state where the debtor could not be located but where the employer could be served with garnishment process. To prevent this avoidance of Sniadach’s requirement, the creditor should be required to establish a real need for quasi in rem jurisdiction by showing that it would not be equally convenient and appropriate to sue where the debtor can be personally served. In any event, should the debtor agree to in personam jurisdiction there would exist no justification on a jurisdictional basis for continuing the garnishment.”
83 Harv.L.Rev. 7, 115-116 (1969). (Footnotes omitted.)

. Since the writing of this dissent, it lias come to my attention that Judge Beard has apparently reversed his own position, as described above, and joined in that of Judge Belson. See Holiday Health, Inc. v. Jolly, General Sessions No. 19111-70, October 28, 1970, in which Judge Beard granted a motion to quash a garnishment filed by a Maryland resident who works in the District of Columbia. Thus it would appear that the majority in this case has relied upon a position repudiated by its author before our writing. There now appears to be agreement among the judges of the court which administers the statute that the interpretation propounded by the majority in this case is inconsistent with the rationale of Sniadach.

. In addition to her due process argument —which I find to be dispositive for the reasons discussed above — plaintiff has also argued that the District’s prejudgment garnishment provisions are in violation of the equal protection clause. Plaintiff notes that, although legislatures are normally presumed to have acted constitutionally, with the result that legislative classifications will be set aside “only if no grounds can be conceived to justify them,” McDonald v. Board of Election, 394 U.S. 802, 809, 89 S.Ct. 1404, 1408, 22 L.Ed.2d 739 (1969), such a standard of court review is not always proper where other constitutional rights are involved. Thus where the classifications are drawn on the basis of “suspect” criteria such as race or wealth, or if the result of a classification may be to affect a “fundamental right,” such as the right to vote. Harper v. Virginia Board of Elections, 383 U.S. 663, 668, 86 S.Ct. 1079, 16 L.Ed.2d 169 (1966), or the right of interstate movement. Shapiro v. Thompson, 394 U.S. 618, 627, 89 S.Ct. 1322, 22 L.Ed.2d 600 (1969), the judicial scrutiny must be more exacting. In such situations, an invidious classification will be upheld only if there is a “compelling interest" on the part of the governmental body to justify it. Shapiro v. Thompson, supra, 394 U.S. at 658-602, 89 S.Ct. 1322 (dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Harlan). Without reaching this question. I note that plaintiff has made out a strong case that such an exacting review is required here, since the result of the residency classification plainly affects the fundamental requirements of due process — notice and an opportunity to be heard. The District’s jn-ovisions, at least ns they apply to Mrs. Tucker, would seem to violate the equal protection clause because the District has no compelling interest in maintaining the classification involved here which operates discriminatoria against nonresidents available for personal service.