Browning v. Loraw

Ritchie, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This is an appeal from an order of the Circuit Court for Garrett County, overruling a motion to quash a writ of fieri facias issued by the Circuit Court for Allegany ⁵²⁵ Comity, directed to the sheriff of Garrett County, on a judgment of the Circuit Court for Allegany County, in a suit between the appellee as plaintiff, and the appellants as defendants, which suit was removed from Garrett County to Allegany County, on application of the appellants. The contention of the appellants - is thus presented by them: “We submit that the execution should have been quashed, because there had been no return of nulla bona to a writ issued upon said judgment in Allegany County, from whence said writ was issued, nor did the plaintiff or his attorneys make and file with the clerk issuing said writ, an affidavit that lie or they were unable to discover in the county where the judgment was rendered, property from which the same could be realized, as required by sec. 141, of Art. 64, Revised Code oí' Maryland.” The appellee maintains that said section does not apply to causes removed from one county to another, and that he had the right to issue his execution directly to Garrett County, under sections 115, 116 of the same Article; and contends, moreover, that a motion to quash was not the proper mode to test the validity of the writ. The sections relied on by the appellants are codified from the Act of .1878, ch. 475; those referred to by the appellee are from the Act of 1856, ch. 322.

The former Act does not in terms, nor does it, we think, in effect, repeal the Act of 1856. In construing Acts of Assembly not necessarily incompatible, and where the legislative intention is not expressed to substitute one for the other, an apparent repugnancy between them may be often reconciled by considering the reasons of their enactment. The real intent of a statute, when ascertained, will always prevail over the literal sense of the terms. If the words do not exclude doubt, the intention is to be collected from the occasion and ⁵²⁶ necessity' of the law.

State vs. Milburn, et al., 9 Gill, 118 ; Frazier vs. Warfield, 13 Md., 279 ; Cearfoss vs. The State, 42 Md., 408 . Looking to the scope and purposes of the two Acts under consideration, their manifest relations do not bring them into conflict. Both were designed to expedite the acquisition of the fruits of a judgment. The Act of 1818 applies generally to the subject of