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63 N.H. 115

Pratt v. Sanborn

Supreme Court of New Hampshire

Decided June 5, 1884

Supreme Court of New Hampshire · decided 1884-06-05

Fobeign Attachment. Facts found by the court. The plaintiff gave to an officer a trustee writ not having the names of any trustees written in it, and at the same time a list of names on a separate paper, with direction to serve the writ on the persons in the list as trustees. The officer served the writ on those persons by reading it to them, reading the name of each from the list. Afterwards their names were inserted as trustees in the writ.

Relies on Johnson v. Abbott · Carroll County Bank v. Goodall · Smith v. Hill

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1884-06-05

How this case has been cited

Cited by 3 later decisions — most recently June 1925

3 state decisions

1018841890190019101920decided

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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Clark, J.

¶1 An officer’s authority in the service of process is derived from and limited by the precept committed to him. The list of names on a separate paper delivered to Dimond, with the plaintiff’s writ, formed no part of it; and the attempted service of the writ upon the trustees before their names were inserted in it was a nullity. The officer had no power to attach the property of the defendant in their hands, because no such authority was conferred by the writ. It was an attempted attachment and service without a writ, and therefore unauthorized and void. Bank v. Goodall, 41 N. H. 81; Smith v. Hill, 45 N. H. 403.

¶2 . The subsequent attaching creditors having a valid attachment, and not having waived or lost their right to object to the invalidity of the plaintiff’s attempted attachment (Johnson v. Abbott, 60 N. H. 150), are entitled to hold the funds in the hands of the trustees.

¶3 Trustees discharged.

Smith, J., did not sit: the others concurred.
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