§ 9-13-58.Corporation’s disclosure of worth of defendant’s shares mandated; refusal treated as contempt

Shares of stock do not carry a price tag the way a car or a piece of furniture does, and a sheriff cannot always tell from the outside how much of a corporation's stock a defendant owns. This section builds a disclosure duty to close that gap. When a sheriff, constable, or other levying officer holding an execution against a shareholder demands information from the president, superintendent, manager, or other officer with access to the corporation's books, that officer has to disclose the number of shares the defendant owns and the par value of those shares.

Par value is not the same thing as market value — it is the nominal figure fixed when the shares were issued, which may sit far below (or occasionally above) what the shares would fetch on the market. The disclosure duty here reaches that fixed figure and the share count, giving the levying officer a starting point for identifying and valuing the property, even though it does not hand over a current market appraisal.

Refusal carries a real consequence. An officer who declines to disclose the information is treated as being in contempt of court and punished accordingly — the statute does not leave the duty as a mere request the corporation can shrug off.