two ground screws on outlet

[kevin]

I have been rewiring the garage, and running in to all sorts of crazy wiring. But here is something I have never seen before: a normal brown outlet with the normal 4 screws (2 hot, 2 neutral), but with TWO green ground screws, on either side. I assume this is/was to make it easy to just wire incoming ground to one screw, then outgoing ground to the other, without need for a pigtail. Or same if it were (at the end of) a split circuit with two incoming cables.

This doesn't sound entirely kosher to me: I thought the ground path was not supposed to rely on a device, such as an outlet. Is this just outdated, or is there some other reason for it?

Thanks, Kevin

BTW - my favorite oddity in the garage (this one just silly). A part of the circuit was connected to the rest through a male + female plug installed into the middle of a cable. Even though both sides of the cable had a ground, and they had a 3-prong female plug, apparently they could only get a 2 prong male side. So they sawed off the ground prong. Then, to top it off, they immediately put the plug in upside down in the socket, to get swapped hot on the downstream circuit.

[AlanBown]

I remember installing outlets like you describe something like 20 years ago. Then the discovered that they the manufacture could save a penny.

[Beeper]

[gfretwell]

Perchance is there a green triangle on the face of the receptacle? If so it is an isolated ground device and those scerws are not connected together.

[kevin]

No, they are definitely connected together -- they are both mounted directly to the metal strip running down the back of the device.

Yup, did this, although I'm not too sure why -- seems like the two screwdowns are probably as good as a wire nut, but maybe not.

Huh? The receptacles seem perfectly fine, other than having two ground screws when only one is customary. What did you mean?