William Tyrell's Heirs, in Error v. Andrew Rountree and Others

Mr Chief Justice Marshall delivered the opinion of the Court. In this case the píáintiffs in error contend that the circuit court misdirected the jury; in consequence of which, the verdict ought to be set aside, the judgment reversed, and a venire facias de novo awarded. They had brought an ejectment for a tract of land, the title to which was shown to have been in their ancestor; but which the defendants claimed under a conveyance thereof made by the sheriff of Williamson county, in West Tennessee, in pursuance of a sale made by him under a writ of venditioni exponas, issued on a judgment rendered in a suit commenced by attachment. On the 12 th day of February 1807, the attachment was regularly issued, and was levied on the 13th of the same month on the land in controversy. The defendants in the attachment did not appear, or replevy the property, but made *468 default; on which judgment was rendered on the 18th of October 1807.. On motion, , the property .attached was condemned, and a writ of venditioni exponas awarded, which issued on, the 24th, and -came to the hands of the officer on the 28th of October 1807, who sold on the 2d of January 1808. The plaintiffs proved that the county of Williamson was divided on the 16th of November 1807, and that part of the land for which the ejectment was brought lay in the new county called Maury. He therefore moved the court to instruct the jury that the sale was void as to that part of the land which was situated in the county of Maury, at the time of the sale; and that the conveyance of the sheriff did not transfer that portion of it. The court instructed the jury that the sale was good by relation to the levy. To this instruction-a bill of exceptions was taken, and the cause is brought up by writ of error. The counsel for the plaintiffs in error has argued the cause as if the process under which the sale was made had been the usual execution awarded on a judgment rendered against a person broüght into court by regular process. Without inquiring whether his objections to the charge would have been well founded, had that been the character, of the case, it is sufficient to observe that, in the actual cause, the land itself was attached. Not having been released, it remained in the custody of the officer subject to the judgment of the court. An interest was vested in him for the purposes of that judgment. The judgment did not create a general lien on it, but was a specific appropriation of the property itself to the satisfaction of that particular judgment. The process which issued did not direct the officer to levy it on the property Of the defendants, but to sell that specific property which was already in his possession by virtue of the attachment and was already-condemned by the judgment of the competent tribunal. ' The subsequent division of the county could not divest this vested interest, or deprive the officer of the power to finish a process which was rightly begun. There is no error in the charge, and the judgment is affirmed with costs.