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3 Wend. 280

Dunham v. Wyckoff

New York Supreme Court

Decided August 15, 1829

New York Supreme Court · decided 1829-08-15

Demurrer to plea. The plaintiff declared in replevin for taking a quantity of household furniture, averring the same to ]je his goods and chattels. The defendant avowed the talc,- . , mg as sheriff of the county of Kings by virtue of a writ of tes¿afum fieri facias in a suit of R. Wells against Daniel S. Gris-wold as the goods and chattels of Griswold, the same being ™ possession of Griswold. The plaintiff demurred to this avowry, and the defendant joined.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1829-08-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 14 later decisions — most recently June 1895

14 state decisions

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Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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¶1*281By the Court,'

Savage. Ch. J.

¶2By the pleading it is admitted that at the time of the taking, the property was in the plaintiff, and the possession in Griswold, the defendant in the execution; and the question is, whether replevin lies'? Since the case of Pangburn v. Patridge, (7 Johns. R. 142,) it has been settled that replevin lies where trespass de bonis asportatis will lie. The plaintiff must have property general or special, and possession either actual or constructive. In Thompson v. Button, (14 Johns. R. 84,) Chief Justice Thompson lays down the broad proposition, that as a general principle, it is undoubtedly true, that goods taken in execution are in the custody of the law, and cannot be taken out of such custody when the officer has found them in and taken them out of the possession of the defendant in the execution. In Clark v. Skinner, (20 Johns. R. 467,) Mr. Justice Platt has shewn very conclusively, that that proposition is correct only as between the defendant in such execution and the officer; and in such a case, it was applied in Gardner v. Campbell, (15 Johns. R. 401.) A variety of cases are stated by Mr. Justice Platt, in which an action of trespass would be a very inadequate remedy. The case of Thompson v. Button, was decided upon the principle of Pangburn v. Patridge, and was a case where the property taken by virtue of the execution was taken from the possession of the plaintiff in the replevin, and not from the possession of the defendant in the execution. The same principle laid down in Pangburn v. Patridge was recognized in the late cases of Marshall v. Davis, (1 Wendell, 199,) and Hall v. Tuttle, (2 Wendell, 475.) {The plaintiff having the property in the goods in question, had the constructive possession ; for the property draws to it the possession/ The plaintiff therefore had the right to take possession afpleasure, and could have sustained trespass ; and replevin and trespass in such cases are concurrent remedies."

¶3The plaintiff is entitled to judgment on the demurrer with leave to the defendant to amend on payment of costs.

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