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42 Mich. 31

Hirth v. Pfeifle

Michigan Supreme Court

Decided October 28, 1879

Michigan Supreme Court · decided 1879-10-28

<p>Waiver by garnishee — Estoppel by garnislvment proceedings.</p> <p>A garnishee cannot waive or admit away the rights of the principal defendant, as by disclosing that the debt was due to some other person.</p> <p>The lawful owner of a claim can only be estopped by garnishment proceedings in which the garnishee has been placed, by regular course of law, in position to bind him.</p> <p>It is no defense to a suit on a joint note that one of the defendants i had been garnished in a former suit as indebted to the husband of the plaintiff in the later one, and had admitted that he was indebted to the husband on the note in suit.</p> <p>Gamishment process cannot reach a joint debt where there is service on only one oí the debtors.</p>

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1879-10-28

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently May 1981

1 federal appellate · 4 state decisions

10187918801890190019101920193019401950196019701980decided

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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Campbell, C. J.

¶1Plaintiffs in' error, being sued on a joint note given by them payable to the order of defend^ ant ’ in error, set up in defense that one of them, J ohn M. Hirth, had been previously garnished in a suit against one Adam Pfeifle whom they averred to have been always-the real owner of the note, and that John M. Hirth *33thereupon disclosed that he was indebted to said Adam Pfeifle on the note, and upon that disclosure judgment was rendered against him for its amount.

¶2The record shows that on the 2d day of November, 1877, one Christian Schmidt sued John M. Hirth as garnishee of John A. Pfeifle in the circuit court for the county of Washtenaw, the suit against Pfeifle having been begun in that court. The disclosure is entitled in a cause against Adam J. Pfeifle and the judgment in a cause against John Adam Pfeifle.

¶3The disclosure contains no reference to Abraham Hirth as signer of the note, and does not describe any note payable to Anna Barbara Pfeifle.

¶4We might be called upon to consider the very peculiar defects in these proceedings, if they were not otherwise fatally defective. It is very certain that a person summoned as garnishee cannot waive or destroy by his admissions the rights of the owners of claims against him, and that Mrs. Pfeifle cannot be affected by his admissions or assertions that he owes her husband and not her. The lawful owner of a claim can only be estopped by garnishee proceedings in which the garnishee has been put by regular course of law into a position to bind such owner. Hebel v. Amazon Insurance Co., 38 Mich., 400.

¶5In Wetherwax v. Paine, 2 Mich., 555, it was held that garnishee process could not reach a debt due from two joint debtors by service on one. It is a garnishee’s duty when he makes a disclosure to set forth the true condition of the liability, and if he sees ñt' to admit a different liability than the true one, or to admit a debt which does not exist, such an admission may authorize a judgment against himself, but it cannot affect any one else.

¶6In the present case not only was Mrs. Pfeifle a stranger to the garnishee proceedings, but they were ineffectual to reach a joint debt at all.

¶7*34The court below decided correctly that they made no defense to this action.

¶8The judgment must be affirmed with costs.

The other Justices concurred.
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