Section 303: Seizing tangible movable property

Supreme Court decisions interpreting this section

1. Supreme Court Judgment No. 1663/2498 (1955)

   Police officers are not execution officers within the meaning of the Code, and no provision empowers a court to order them to take custody of seized property, the more so where they have replied that they lack the manpower. A judgment creditor who cannot find a custodian must proceed under section 303, which requires the execution officer to take the property into safekeeping, to deposit it at a suitable place or with a suitable person, or to entrust it to the judgment debtor with the judgment creditor's consent, and to give notice of the list of seized property, rather than asking the court to press the police into service. Note on numbering: the decision was given under the earlier text of the section, in which the custody provision was subsection (2). In the section as it now stands custody is subsection (1), notice is subsection (2) and marking is subsection (3).

   A judgment creditor took the execution officer to seize the debtor standing rice, but the seizure could not proceed because no custodian could be found. Instead of following section 303(2), the creditor asked the court to order the local police to keep the property; the police replied that they had insufficient manpower. The Supreme Court held that police are not execution officers under the Code and that no law empowers a court to compel them to act as custodians. The creditor had never asked the execution officer to take any further step under section 303(2), and by the time of the final appeal, more than eight months on, the rice had been harvested, so there was nothing left to keep and no order the court could usefully make.

Curated decisions with case numbers verified against the Supreme Court database. English renderings are the firm's editorial translation for study.