§ 490.010.Wrongful Attachment

Attachment is a powerful, pretrial remedy, and § 490.010 defines the flip side of that power: when using it counts as wrongful. It lists three distinct triggers rather than one general standard.

The first, in subdivision (a), is levying -- or serving a temporary protective order -- in an action where attachment was never authorized to begin with. That trigger has its own narrow exception: it is not a wrongful attachment if the levy failed only because of § 483.010(c)'s bar on attaching consumer transactions, and the party who sold, leased, licensed, serviced, or lent the underlying money reasonably believed the transaction was not primarily for personal, family, or household purposes. In other words, an honest business mistake about a borderline consumer transaction does not automatically expose the plaintiff to wrongful-attachment liability.

The second trigger, subdivision (b), is broader and unconditional: levying, or serving a temporary protective order, in an action where the plaintiff does not ultimately recover judgment. Losing the underlying case makes the earlier attachment wrongful, with no good-faith exception built into this subdivision.

The third trigger, subdivision (c), targets a specific procedural shortcut: a writ obtained under the emergency, no-hearing provisions of Article 3 of Chapter 4 or Chapter 5, levied on property that turns out to be exempt from attachment. Because those chapters let a plaintiff attach before the defendant gets to be heard, the law holds the plaintiff to a higher standard here -- levying exempt property under those emergency writs is wrongful unless the plaintiff shows a reasonable belief the property was not exempt.