Court Opinion

ID: 9663778
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-23 23:50:31.316816+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:14:56.388633
License: Public Domain

Heffernan, J.
(dissenting). The majority opinion would lead one to believe that garnishment before judgment is a venerable practice of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence and should be accorded the imprimatur of time. Yet, the fact of the matter is that this is a rather new development in Wisconsin law. The excellent brochure written by Paul L. Moskowitz for the Wisconsin Extension Law Department states:
“Chapter 267 of the Wisconsin Statutes' (1959) comes from R.S. 1878, Section 2752. The statute in Wisconsin originally provided garnishment as a remedy in aid of execution only. Many states still follow this law.” 1962 Wisconsin Lawyers’ Seminars, Wisconsin Garnishment and Exemptions, p. 1.
Garnishment is strictly a statutory remedy. Markman v. Becker (1959), 6 Wis. 2d 438, 95 N. W. 2d 233. Thus, it is apparent that it is no great sacred bastion of the common law that is under assault in this case. The only question is whether legislative action has deprived the defendant and others similarly situated of their constitutional rights.
The majority concludes that the garnishment statute does not result in a deprivation of property. The rationale behind this is embodied in the majority’s quotation from Byrd v. Rector (1932), 112 W. Va. 192, 163 S. E. 845. The essence of that quotation is that there is no deprivation of the defendant’s property because the procedure places the defendant’s property in the hands of the law and not in the hands of the plaintiff until after judgment.
It strikes me that this reasoning is most unrealistic. The constitutional question is not whether defendant has *179lost his title to the property, nor whether another has gained its beneficial use. The test is whether he was deprived of his property. In the instant case no legal fiction can disguise the fact that, from the time of the service of the garnishee summons until the lien of that process is released, the defendant is unable to make any beneficial use of his wages other than the pittance which may be available to him either as an exemption or subsistence allowance. Moreover, the case of Byrd v. Rector is only of strained applicability in the present case. In that case an infant plaintiff, who had been injured by the explosion of a dynamite cap which had been negligently disposed of by a nonresident defendant, commenced a suit in tort for his personal injury. Accordingly, an attachment was issued on the ground that the defendant was a nonresident. The Byrd Case furnishes a sound rationale in support of our attachment laws, and where the plaintiff’s attack on the attachment procedures, ch. 266 of the Wisconsin statutes, the citation would be more appropriate. Chapter 266 recognizes that attachment is an unusual remedy — to be resorted to only in special circumstances. It is designed to protect state residents from creditors whose conduct amounts to fraud or from foreign creditors who have assets within the state. The Byrd Case situation is clearly contemplated by sec. 266.03 (2) (a):
“(2) Tort Action. In tort actions the affidavit shall state that a cause of action in tort exists in favor of the plaintiff and against the defendant, that the damages sustained exceed fifty dollars specifying the amount claimed and either:
“(a) That the defendant is not a resident of this state . . . .”
The case of Ownbey v. Morgan (1921), 256 U. S. 94, 109, 41 Sup. Ct. 433, 65 L. Ed. 837, points out that the attachment of the goods of a foreigner is to be treated uniquely and is dependent in part on the duty of a state *180to protect its own citizens in their claims against nonresident owners of property situate within the state. The Ownbey Case uses a rather quaint, archaic, and unacceptable rationale in concluding that there is no denial of due process when a debtor’s property is detained, stating:
“[A] man who has property usually has friends and credit — and hence in its normal operation it must be regarded as a permissible condition; and it cannot be deemed so arbitrary as to render the procedure inconsistent with due process of law . . . .” (p. 111.)
This same case stressed the origins of the attachment procedure and pointed out that its purpose was to distrain the defendant’s property to assure the appearance of the defendant so that there could be a procedure in personam against him. It is clear that Ownbey v. Morgan has little relevance to the Wisconsin law which permits the garnishment of wages of Wisconsin residents.
While McKay v. McInnes (1928), 279 U. S. 820, 49 Sup. Ct. 344, 73 L. Ed. 975, is relied upon by the majority, it appears that the United States Supreme Court without opinion merely affirmed the Maine court on the basis of Ownbey v. Morgan, supra, and Coffin Brothers v. Bennett (1928), 277 U. S. 29, 48 Sup. Ct. 422, 72 L. Ed. 768. As pointed out above, Ownbey is not applicable to this case. The Coffin Brothers opinion is a rather cursory one by Mr. Justice Holmes in which he justifies his conclusion on the basis that it is a “familiar method in Georgia.” This is hardly a persuasive rationale; and as pointed out above, it is specious reasoning to conclude that, because a debtor has a chance to be heard on the question of whether or not his property should be returned to him, he has not been deprived of his property in the interim. Moreover, Mr. Justice Holmes points out that the defendants “are allowed to raise and try every possible defense by an affidavit of illegality.” (Emphasis supplied.) The Wisconsin statute provides for no *181such comprehensive mode of defense available at the inception of the suit.
While some of the reasoning in these cases is appropriate to the garnishment of property, it has little or no relevance to the garnishment of wages. The garnishment of wages is uniquely a product of the accrual bookkeeping system which has only come to fruition in the twentieth century. Until recently, laborers were paid by the day and not by the week or month. Hence, the law of garnishment in terms of historical precedent arose out of the garnishment of property other than wages. There is little pertinence in the majority’s statement that the right to place a lien upon a man’s property dates back to medieval England and Roman times. Accrued wages, in terms of the history of the law, are a new property right and should be treated by the law with that distinction in mind.
It should also be noted that until recently wages were totally exempt from garnishment. Rood, Garnishment (West’s, 1896), p. 119, see. 87, states the policy of the wage exemptions that was nearly universal until near the end of the nineteenth century:
“The policy of the law — the intent of the legislature in enacting these provisions — is too plain for argument. It was to secure to those who toil with their hands, or depend for their subsistence upon their personal earnings, a sufficient amount of the fruits of their labor to supply them and their families with the necessities of life and a few of the conveniences of modern civilization, free from the merciless grasp of their less needy creditors.”
It was not until the enactment of ch. 141 of the Laws of Wisconsin (1888) that the exemption for wages was in part abandoned.1
*182I would concede that it is not unconstitutional to deprive a defendant of his property, including wages, by garnishment and to hold it in custodia legis for a limited period of time so that the creditor can be certain that the assets are there to satisfy its judgment when once obtained. Under the Wisconsin statutes, however, the plaintiff need not serve his summons on the defendant until ten days after he has served the garnishee. This is a clear denial of due process, for the wages of the defendant are dis-trained without the necessity of notice to their equitable owner. As the majority opinion clearly points out, however, there is no allegation that this particular denial of justice took place in the instant case. It should be noted, however, that the very case relied upon by the court, Ownbey v. Morgan, supra, page 103, states that, in determining whether there is a denial of due process, the court is not confined to the particular case at hand but is to make its determination “. . . with respect to the general effect and operation of the system of procedure established by the statutes.” While Ownbey takes the position that the unusual case of hardship should be overlooked in favor of the general statutory scheme, it is obvious that the converse reasoning is equally applicable.
The defendant complains, however, that even though the notice is given simultaneously, i.e., by a concurrent service on both the principal defendant and the garnishee, nevertheless, the property is withheld unconscionably until there has been a trial of the principal action. The majority dismisses this contention by stating that it is in the inherent power of a court to prevent any abuse or misuse of the process and that the defendant may, as said in Orton v. Noonan, infra, “in some proper form” contest the truth of the grounds alleged by the plaintiff.
This court has defined that right to contest the plaintiff’s use of process in Chernin v. International Oil Co. (1952), 261 Wis. 308, 52 N. W. 2d 785, and it is apparent that the defendant’s rights are in fact limited to the determination of whether a good-faith controversy exists. *183Orton v. Noonan (1871), 27 Wis. 572, quoted by the majority, makes it clear that all the plaintiff has to do to satisfy this requirement is the making and filing of an affidavit of indebtedness to the plaintiff. And Chernin v. International Oil Co. merely determined that where the complaint in the principal action alleges a cause of action for damages for breach of contract the garnishment action will not be dismissed.
Under the state of law as it now stands, unless the plaintiff’s complaint is demurrable or on its face fraudulent there is no relief available to the defendant short of the trial of the principal action. There is no statutory or common law procedure whereby the defendant can in a timely or summary fashion “raise . . . every possible defense by an affidavit of illegality,” as described in Coffin Brothers v. Bennett, supra. The right to a prompt and summary defense on the merits that Mr. Justice Holmes found as a saving grace in Coffin is fatally absent in the instant case.
Nor do I consider the possibility of a malicious prosecution action to be much solace to a wage owner who has been oppressed by an improper garnishment procedure action. If he has the resources to commence a retaliatory action for damages, he most likely would have been able to successfully defend himself in a garnishment action. The majority reasoning is similar to that of Ownbey where the United States Supreme Court concluded that the defendant’s property would not have been seized if he were not a man of property and, hence, he should be able to take care of himself. The circuity of the court’s reasoning is not acceptable to me.
I conclude that a major constitutional defect of the statute is its failure to provide for a mandatory trial on the merits within a limited and statutorily defined time following the seizure of the defendant’s wages.
I am in agreement with the majority’s point that the issuance of a garnishee summons by the clerk of court does not constitute the usurpation of judicial power. I *184am, however, in complete disagreement with the rationale by which it arrives at that conclusion. Its conclusion is supported by the reliance on two discredited cases. The first of these is State v. Van Brocklin (1927), 194 Wis. 441, 217 N. W. 277. In this case the question was whether a statute which permitted the clerk of the Winnebago county court to issue a search warrant constituted the proper exercise of judicial power. The court in Van Brocklin found an implied authorization for such delegation of power in art. YII, sec. 23 of the Constitution, which manifestly was designed to provide for the appointment of court commissioners exercising the power of a judge in chambers. The court concluded that if the legislature had that power it undoubtedly had the residual power to authorize clerks of municipal courts to issue criminal warrants. It is submitted that this hardly follows. At any rate this court has subsequently, in State ex rel. White v. Simpson (1965), 28 Wis. 2d 590, 137 N. W. 2d 391, clearly ruled that only a magistrate exercising judicial power is authorized to issue a warrant, making it clear that the question of probable cause is not to be left to an administrative officer. Giordenello v. United States (1958), 357 U. S. 480, 486, 78 Sup. Ct. 1245, 2 L. Ed. 2d 1503, used the language, “The Commissioner must judge for himself the . . . facts ... to show probable cause.” (Emphasis supplied.) The other case relied upon by the majority, Kreulhaus v. Birmingham (1909), 164 Ala. 623, 51 So. 297, held that the statute that permitted a clerk to issue warrants of arrest did not confer any judicial power. The rationale of the Alabama court was:
“The statute in this case conferred no power upon the clerk to finally hear and determine, nor even to commit to bail, but only to issue warrants, which must be construed to authorize him to issue warrants on probable cause . . . .” (pp. 629, 630.)
*185It is obvious that following the White v. Simpson rationale, this case is equally repugnant to our now accepted standards of due process.
I agree with the court’s rationale that the only determination required of the clerk is a ministerial one, that is, it is only necessary for the plaintiff to set forth in the language of the statute the basis upon which the summons is requested. This is not a determination of probable cause. It is not a judicial function and is not constitutionally prohibited. I object, however, to the majority’s failure to rest their position upon this perfectly good argument. Instead they have chosen to shore up this rationale with outworn precedents of extremely dubious authority, and by so doing have put the ruling of White v. Simpson in jeopardy.
In view of my views set forth above, I must respectfully dissent from the court’s opinion. I am convinced that the plaintiff has established that she is personally aggrieved to the extent that she may properly raise at least some of the constitutional issues which she presses. Since I find her complaint has validity as set forth above, I would hold the garnishment statute unconstitutional in that it deprives the defendant of property — wages—without due process of law — in that she lacks any method of insuring a reasonably prompt adjudication of her rights and the return of her property. I also dissent because the majority opinion has failed to state adequately what I conceive to be its true position — that the affirmance of the trial court results not from a conviction that the trial court is correct on the constitutional question, but rather on the fact that this particular plaintiff has not been aggrieved. The court was no doubt influenced by the legislative progress of the bill that would end the garnishment of wages prior to judgment. There is an understandable willingness to “let sleeping dogs lie” when there exists the strong possibility that the legislature will shortly correct this harsh and unconstitutional legislation. I *186believe, however, that this court would be remiss in its constitutional duties if it did not hold a statute unconstitutional if in fact it appears to be so, even though the legislature is about to fashion a correction. Since I believe the statute to be in part unconstitutional, I would reverse.
I am authorized to state that Mr. Justice Wilkie joins me in this dissent.