garnishment
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 241 U.S. 518 - New York Life Insurance v. Dunlevy · 1916Most cited · 198 citing opinions
Beyond doubt, without the necessity of further personal service of process upon Mrs. Dunlevy, the court of common pleas at Pittsburgh had ample power through garnishment proceedings to inquire whether she held a valid claim against the insurance company, and, if found to exist, then to condemn and appropriate it so far as necessary to discharge the original judgment. Although herself outside the limits of the state, such disposition of the property would have been binding on her. ... It has been affirmatively held in Pennsylvania that a judgment debtor is not a party to a garnishment proceeding to condemn a claim due him from a third person, and is not bound by a judgment discharging the garnishee ... Former opinions of this court uphold validity of such proceedings upon the theory that jurisdiction to condemn is acquired by service of effective process upon the garnishee.
How often courts cite the cases defining “garnishment”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “garnishment” — 210 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1854–1916
- ORIGINAL
The proceeding by garnishment is designed to subject a debt due to the defendant, to the payment of the demand of his creditor, by investing the creditor with a judicial power to collect and apply the amount due. The claim of the attaching creditor against the defendant is only extinguished by a satisfaction of his demand by the garnishee. The garnishee is entitled to make at law legal defences, and his equities must be sought in a court of chancery.
process and effect