Rhode Island § 10-10-1 - Imprisonment on Civil Process

§ 10-10-1. Grounds for writ commanding arrest.

At the commencement of a civil action, a writ, commanding the arrest of any person not exempt by law from arrest, shall be issued from the superior court or from any district court only after application to a justice thereof, who may, in his or her discretion, order the issuance of the writ and who shall endorse such order in writing on the face of the writ:

(1) In any action on penal statutes, or in any action sounding in tort, except replevin, or against bail in criminal cases.

(2) Whenever the plaintiff in the action, his or her agent or attorney, shall make affidavit, to be endorsed on the writ or annexed to the writ, that the plaintiff has a just claim against the defendant, that is due, upon which the plaintiff expects to recover in the action a sum sufficient to give jurisdiction to the court to which the writ is returnable; and also either that the defendant to be arrested is about to leave the state, without leaving therein real or personal estate whereon an execution that may be obtained in such action can be served, and, in case the defendant is not a resident of the state, that the plaintiff, or if more than one plaintiff, that some of the plaintiffs are actual residents of the state, or that the defendant to be arrested has committed fraud in fact involving moral turpitude or intentional wrong, either in contracting the debt upon which the action is founded or in the concealment of his or her property or in the disposition of the property; provided, that whenever an arrest shall be made in accordance with the second clause of this section, the court to which the writ is made returnable, or any justice thereof, may by order, upon application of any defendant so arrested, and for cause shown upon hearing the parties therein, release the defendant from the arrest and discharge the bail taken thereon, if any; but the action shall not be dismissed on account of the release and discharge, but may be prosecuted to final judgment in the same manner as if no release and discharge had been granted.