Attachment is an English legal term, signifying the form of process by the authority of which the person or the goods of a debtor may be seized in satisfaction. As a proceeding against the person, it is a species of criminal process, and has the force of much that will be found under ARREST (q.v.). In form, it is a writ addressed to the sheriff, commanding him to attach the person against whom it is issued, and have him before the court to answer for some act or default amounting to contempt of court. Thus, in Hawkins's Pleas of the Crown, such contempts are thus classed: (1) Disobedience to the Queen's writs; (2) Contempts in the face of a court; (3) Contemptuous words or writings concerning a court; (4) Refusing to comply with the rules and awards of a court; and (5) Forgery of writs, or any other deceit tending to impose on a court. Parties are also liable to the process of attachment as for a contempt of court where, in an arbitration (see ARBITRATION) the award having been made a rule of court, the parties refuse to obey the same. In Chancery, there may be attachment of the person for judicial default or other offence to the court, as, for example, where a defendant fails to put in a proper defence to the plaintiff's statement of claim. A witness who fails to attend when duly summoned is in such event considered to have committed a contempt of court, and to be liable to be punished for such contempt by attachment.
No attachment may be issued without the leave of the court, to be applied for on notice to the party against whom it issues.
The proceeding by attachment of debts or goods in hands of a third party resembles in some respects the Scots diligence or process of arrestment (see ARRESTMENT). The best illustration we can give of it, in this sense, is that relating to the power of a judgment creditor to recover under his judgment. Under the rules of court now in force, a judgment creditor may, on an ex parte application, obtain a garnishee order to attach debts owing to the debtor from any third person within the jurisdiction; and the third person or Garnishee (q.v.) may be ordered to attend and show cause why he should not pay his debt to the judgment creditor. This latter proceeding is the equivalent of the action of forthcoming in Scotland. The ordinary diligence of arrestment in execution against the movable estate of a debtor, as practised in Scotland, is in England not usually called attachment, but simply execution of judgment debt.
Foreign Attachment originated in the custom whereby the citizens of London, Bristol, Exeter, and Lancaster, when suing foreigners—i.e. debtors outside the city—were entitled before judgment to attach their goods or debts in the hands of a garnishee, and so compel them to appear and plead. It is still competent in the Mayor's Court of London, though not in the High Court of Justice. It resembles the Scottish procedure of arrestment in security and ad fundandum jurisdictionem. See ARRESTMENT.
In the United States, attachment may be defined as the taking into the custody of the law the person or property of one who is already before the court, or of one whom it is sought to bring before the court; also a writ for this purpose. To some extent it is of the nature of a criminal process. In some states, attachments are distinguished as foreign and domestic—the former issued against a non-resident having property within the jurisdiction of the state, the latter against a resident in the state; jurisdiction over the person or property being necessary for an attachment. An attachment issued under a state law which has not been adopted by congress, or by a rule of court, cannot be sustained in a United States court. Money due to a seaman for wages is not attachable in the hands of a purser, the purser being a distributing agent of the government, and in no sense the debtor of the seaman.