Ridge Lumber Co. v. Overmont Development

Moore, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. The question here presented is whether appellant, The Ridge Lumber Company, as judgment creditor, could legally reach funds of Overmont Development, a judgment debtor, deposited with Baltimore County, Maryland, by laying an attachment in the hands of Baltimore County, as garnishee. The Ridge Lumber Company obtained a judgment in the amount of $2,762.76, plus interest and costs, against Overmont Development on April 2, 1975 in the Circuit Court ¹⁵ for Howard County. To collect its judgment, Ridge Lumber filed certified copies of the docket entries from Howard ¡County in the Circuit Court for Baltimore County.

It thereupon obtained an Attachment on Judgment and laid the same in the hands of Baltimore County, Maryland, as garnishee. The County moved to quash the attach and the motion was granted after a hearing before the Honorable John Grason Turnbull. From the order granting the motion, this appeal was taken. The appellant urges that we “officially abolish and lay to rest the antiquated principle that an attachment on judgment cannot be laid in the hands of a municipality as a garnishee.” We decline and shall affirm.

Beginning with Baltimore v. Root, 8 Md. 95 (1855), the Court of Appeals has repeatedly held that governmental officers and subdivisions of the State are exempt from attachment proceedings where the money sought to be attached is held by the garnishee in its official capacity. Hughes v. Svboda, 168 Md. 440 , 178 A. 108 (1935); Dale v. Brumbly, 98 Md. 468 , 56 A. 807 (1904); Wilson v. Ridgely, 46 Md. 235 (1877); see Mayor of Rockville v. Randolph, 267 Md. 56 , 296 A. 2d 574 (1972). In Root , the judgment creditor sought to garnish the wages of a public employee, a police officer, held by the City of Baltimore. Writing for the court, Judge Eccleston set forth the rationale for the rule: “ Tlreat public inconvenience would ensue if money could be thus arrested in the hands pf officers, and they be made liable to all the delay, embarrassment and trouble that would ensue from being stopped in the routine of their business, compelled to appear in court, employ counsel, and answer interrogatories, as well as take care that the proceedings are regularly carried on, and bail to return duly given.

If a precedent of this kind were set there seems no reason why the State or county treasurer, or other fiscal officers of the commonwealth, or of municipal bodies, may not be ¹⁶ subjected to the levying of attachments^ which has never been attempted nor supposed to come within the attachment law. We do not, therefore, think this is such a debt as is contemplated by that law.’ ” 8 Md. at 101 , quoting Bulkley v. Eckert, 3 Barr. 368. The policy considerations that prohibit interference with the performance of public functions by the remedy of garnishment extend to situations in which a county is the prospective garnishee, Wilson v. Ridgely, supra, and, as well, where a private citizen, rather than a governmental employee, is the judgment debtor. Hughes v. Svboda, supra.

In Wilson , where the surplus proceeds of the land of the debtor, sold for non-payment of taxes, was held not liable to attachment in the hands of the county treasurer, the Court stated: “Though the provisions of the attachment laws of this State are very broad, we cannot believe that they were ever intended to authorize attachments to be laid upon funds in the hands of State or municipal officers as such, and thereby impose upon them and the