§ 25-1039.Attachment; additional security; right of defendant to require.

An attachment forces a plaintiff to post an undertaking with a surety before the sheriff can seize the defendant’s property, precisely because that seizure can cause real harm if the attachment turns out to be wrong. Section 25-1039 protects that safeguard against going stale. At any time before judgment, and after giving the plaintiff reasonable notice, the defendant can move the court for additional security.

The motion is not just a formality. If the court is satisfied that the surety on the plaintiff’s undertaking has moved out of Nebraska, or is not sufficient for the amount involved, the court has real teeth to work with: it can vacate the order of attachment outright and direct that any property taken under it be returned to the defendant. That drastic step, though, is not automatic. The court sets a reasonable time for the plaintiff to come up with sufficient security instead, and only orders restitution of the property if the plaintiff fails to do so within that window.

In practice, this section gives a defendant leverage to make sure the protection an undertaking is supposed to provide stays real throughout the case, rather than becoming worthless because a surety’s circumstances changed after the attachment issued.