Court Opinion

ID: 9764368
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-29 03:19:36.178611+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:29:55.845945
License: Public Domain

Justice PLEICONES.
I respectfully dissent, and would vacate the Court of Appeals’ opinion and the circuit court’s “Order to Execute and Levy” filed June 3, 2005. I concur fully in Justice Beatty’s analysis of S.C.Code Ann. § 15-39-30 (2005). Moreover, any question whether a judgment can be enforced more than ten years after it was filed is answered conclusively by S.C.Code Ann. § 15-39-130 (2005). This statute provides that the sheriffs or other officer’s authority to levy and execute final process ceases when the judgment’s “active energy” ends “as provided by law,” i.e. ten years after the original entry of judgment. In fact, an officer who fails to return the process at the first regular term of common pleas after the expiration of the judgment is subject to penalties for neglect of duty. S.C.Code Ann. § 15-39-140 (2005).
Since the judgment cannot be enforced by execution and levy after ten years, it is futile to continue court proceedings after that date. Upon the passage of ten years, the judgment is unenforceable as a matter of law, and all process related to it, whether in the courts or in the hands of the sheriff or other *562officer, must cease. Such a bright line rule9 benefits debtors, creditors, and other commercial entities by allowing all interested parties to review the judgment rolls and know with certainty the date upon which a judgment will lose its efficacy.
Since the “Order to Execute and Levy” cannot be performed as the judgment upon which it is predicated has no “active energy,” I would vacate both the decision of the Court of Appeals and that order itself.
I respectfully dissent.

. 1 am unclear as to what action by a debtor can extend a judgment's "active energy.” Either the period is extended so "long as a party has taken steps within the ten year period to enforce the judgment” or such an extension is limited to the majority’s “narrow holding” and "limited to facts similar to those at issue in this case.”