Foreign Attachment

\L. Lat. attachiamentum forinsecum.] In English practice. An attachment of the property of a foreign or absent debtor.* A judicial proceeding peculiar to certain cities and towns in England, by means of which a creditor may obtain the security of the goods or other personal property of his debtor, in the hands of a third person, for the purpose, in the first instance, of enforcmg the appearance of the debtor to answer to an action; and afterwards, upon his continued default, of obtaining the goods or property absolutely, in satisfaction of the demand. F, Cyclopadia, Called /or«^, because it operates against a foreign debtor, or a debtor out of the jurisdiction within which the property is found. See Foreign. Cowell defines it " an attachment of a foreigner's goods found within a liberty or city, in the hands of a third person, for the satisfaction of some citizen to whom the Midforeigner oweth money." The proceedings, as carried on in the Mayor's court of London, are in the form of an action supposed to be commenced by summons against the debtor, on the return of which a suggestion is supposed to be made by the plaintiff to the court, that some third person within the city has goods of the defendant in his possession, or owes him debts, by which goods or debts the plaintiff prays that the defendant maybe attached until he appears to answer the ac^* tion brought against him. In point of fact, the first proceeding is an affidavit of the debt, made by the plaintiff or creditor, upon which an entry of the supposed action is made in the action book kept in the mayor's court office, and then the plaintiff's attor* ney proceeds immediately against the third party, or garnishee as he is called, by attachment and summons. See the proceedings described at length in Magrath v. Hardy, 4 Bitig. JV.

C7. 782.

The English foreign attachment is founded entirely upon local customs, and is an exception to the general law of the land. In the United States, a similar process has been adopted against the property of absent, non resident and absconding debtors, and called in some states trustee, and in other garnishee process. The practice however is, in many respects, different from the English, being regulated by the statute and local law of each state.

See 2 Kent's Com. 401, 403, note.

U. S. Digest dt Supplement, Absent and Absconding Debtors.

Story, J., 4 Mason's JR. 447.