Rhode Island General Laws

R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-25-15 (2026)

Cases in which execution may issue against body

✓ current as of July 2026

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An execution, original, alias, or pluries, may issue against the body of a defendant not exempt from arrest in an action which shall have been brought upon a penal statute, or in an action sounding in tort in which the title to real estate was not in dispute, or against bail in criminal cases, or whenever the defendant shall have been arrested and held to bail upon a writ of arrest or writ of mesne process therein, or whenever it shall be made to appear to the court which rendered the judgment in the action, or to any justice thereof, that the defendant is about to leave the state without leaving therein sufficient real or personal estate to satisfy the judgment, or that the defendant has been guilty of fraud in fact involving moral turpitude or intentional wrong either in contracting the debt for the recovery of which the judgment was rendered or in the concealment, detention or disposition of his or her property; provided, however, that no execution, original, alias or pluries, shall issue against the body of a defendant unless so ordered by a justice of the superior court or a justice of a district court upon the written ex parte motion of a party named in the action.

Notes of Decisions

Cited in 3 cases, 1972–1991 · leading case: Landrigan v. McElroy, 457 A.2d 1056 (R.I. 1983).

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Landrigan v. McElroy, 457 A.2d 1056 (R.I. 1983). · cites it 21× “167, § 2 (amending G.L.1956, § 9-25-15). Clearly, this amendment was intended “to deprive judgment creditors of arbitrary power to issue, through their counsel, body executions against judgment debtors and to require submission of the petitions to judicial scrutiny.”

Whiting v. Kirk, 768 F. Supp. 26 (D.R.I. 1991). · cites it 2× “The right that was violated was plaintiffs right to be free from an unlawful seizure of his body, that is, the right to be free from a body attachment absent a constitutionally mandated hearing before a judge. Having established the “right,” I must next determine whether that…”

Martin v. Estrella, 292 A.2d 884 (R.I. 1972). · cites it 3× “In this case, however, no question as to the constitutionality of the statute, §9-25-15, has been raised. *370 In our statute, §9-25-15, the Legislature has set out certain specific grounds which, when established, give a judgment creditor the right to a body execution against…”

Annotations are extracted automatically from the opinions in the Syfert caselaw corpus and ranked by authority, recency, and treatment. Dots show Syfertize treatment of the citing case itself.