Joseph McKenna

“ The amount due Sharitt, having been for wages, was exempt from attachment in Kansas. It was held that the garnishment was not a defense. The facts were similar, therefore, to those of the case at bar.
The ground of the opinion of Mr. Justice Valentine was that the Missouri court had no jurisdiction, because the situs of the debt was in Kansas. In order words, and to quote the language of the learned justice, 'the situs of a debt is either with the owner thereof, or at his domicile, or where the debt is to be paid; and it cannot be subjected to a proceeding in garnishment anywhere else. ”

“ How proceedings in garnishment may be availed of in defense, whether in abatement or bar of the suit on the debt attached, or for a continuance of it or suspension of execution,-the practice of the states of the Union is not uniform. But it is obvious and necessary justice that such proceedings should be allowed as a defense in some way. ”

“ To do it, you must go to the domicile of his debtor, and can only do it under the laws and procedure in force there. This is a legal necessity, and considerations of situs are somewhat artificial. If not artificial, whatever of substance there is must be with the debtor. He, and he only, has something in his hands. That something is the res, and gives character to the action, as one in the nature of a proceeding in rem. ”

“ If it can be done in any way than by process against, and jurisdiction of, his debtor, that way does not occur to us.
Besides the proposition which we have discussed, there are involved in the decision of the Sharitt Case the propositions that a debt may have a situs where it is payable, and that it cannot be made migratory by the debtor. The latter was probably expressed as a co sequence of the primary proposition, and does not require separate consideration. Besides, there is no fact of change of domicile in the case. The plaintiff in error was not temporarily in Iowa. ”