Court Opinion

ID: 9561659
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:13:42.432462+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:05.732090
License: Public Domain

Winsor, J.*
(dissenting)—I dissent and would reverse the trial court. SAR's are a property right subject to execution. The superior court does have the statutory right to require the judgment debtor to exercise his right to a SAR for the benefit of a creditor.
Under RCW 6.04.060 "[a] 11 property, real and personal . . . not exempted by law, shall be liable to execution." This statute is all inclusive. Johnson v. Dahlquist, 130 Wash. 29, 31, 225 P. 817 (1924). The Supreme Court recognized this in Johnson v. Dahlquist, supra at 31-32, when it held that an unliquidated claim of indebtedness can be subject to execution even though the debt is owed by the levying party.
*208In Woody's Olympia Lumber, Inc. v. Roney, 9 Wn. App. 626, 633, 513 P.2d 849 (1973) the court held an unliqui-dated tort claim can be subject to execution. In doing so, it clearly recognized that "there has been a steady trend of the law to make all species of property freely alienable and subject to the demands of the owner's creditors." Woody's Olympia Lumber, Inc. v. Roney, supra at 633. The court went on to state at page 633:
Our statute is sufficiently broad to include unliquidated tort claims even if of dubious value, and we see no reason to limit by judicial construction or prohibit the judicial process of attachment or execution by excluding such claims.
As part of a compensation package, the respondent received stock appreciation rights. SAR's are essentially wages and as such are a property right which should not be exempt from the reach of creditors.
The mechanism to require the respondent to exercise his SAR's for the benefit of appellant exists under RCW 6.04-.020. The statute provides three kinds of execution: the first against the judgment debtor's property, the second for delivery of possession of real or personal property, and finally by "commanding the enforcement of or obedience to any special order of the court". RCW 6.04.020. By entering a special order, the trial court can require respondent to exercise his SAR's for the benefit of appellant. This does not stretch the language of RCW 6.04.020, and in fact allows a creditor a mechanism to reach the property of a debtor.
Respondents argue an analogy to exempt life insurance proceeds. Although SAR's resemble in some ways the cash surrender value of life insurance proceeds, those proceeds are protected from creditors, not for the benefit of the insured, but for his or her widow and children. This is a clear exception to the statute allowing a wide variety of property to be executed upon. The cash surrender exception is "rather in the nature of a preference which is given to the beneficiary over the creditors of the debtor insured". *209Fox v. Swartz, 235 Minn. 337, 347-48, 51 N.W.2d 80 (1952), quoted in In re Elliott, 74 Wn.2d 600, 621, 446 P.2d 347, 360 (1968).
This "preference" established for life insurance proceeds should not be extended to SAR's, an incentive which is essentially an alternative form of wages. A simple reading of RCW 6.04.020 allows a trial judge to enter a "special order" and can require a recipient of an SAR to execute it for the benefit of a creditor.
Review denied by Supreme Court June 2, 1987.