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70 Ala. 421

Martin v. Hall

Supreme Court of Alabama

Decided December 15, 1881

Supreme Court of Alabama · decided 1881-12-15

Tried before the Hon. IT. C. Speake. This was a motion by William B. Martin, for a summary judgment against Thomas O. Hall and the sureties on his official bond as constable, “ on account of the failure of said Hall to make the money on an execution in his hands as constable, in favor of said W. B. Martin, and against Jacob Houst, issued on the 2d May, 1874, by J. J. St. Clair, justice of the peace, for $24, besides $5 costs of suit; and which, by the use of due diligence,…

Relies on Barron v. Tart

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1881-12-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently January 1951

5 state decisions

2018811890190019101920193019401950decided

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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SOMEBYILLE, J.

¶1The execution issued on the judgment against Flouts in the justice’s court, and the other papers connected with the attachment suit brought in that court by the appellant,. Martin, were improperly excluded as evidence. W here such process is regular on its face, as the execution here was, and is issued by the competent authority, a sheriff or constable is “ justified in the execution of the same, whatever may he the defeat in the proceeding on which it was issued.”—Code, 1876, § 3041. The attachment proceeding was full of defects, which would have proved fatal in a direct proceeding; but the judgment w*as not absolutely void, and cannot, therefore, be collaterally assailed.Barron v. Tart, 18 Ala. 668. It was the duty of the constable to execute the process, in the absence of some step taken by the defendants to arrest it, by certiorari, appeal, or otherwise. This was a motion against the constable and his sureties, for failure to make the money on the execution, which, it was alleged, he could have done by the use of due diligence.

¶2The court erred in its ruling; and the judgment is reversed, and the cause remanded.

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