Case ID: scl_33/html/0170-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "\n      Per Curiam.\n    ", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The administrator of G. J. Williams v. E. W. Perry.
    
    The Statute of Limitations may be objected to the defendant’s discount, ore te-nas, at the trial. — Vide Tmnbull v. Stirohecker, 4 McC. 411.
    
      Before Mr. Justice O’Neall, at Edgefield, Fall Term, 1847.
    This was a sum. pro. to recover money belonging to the plaintiff’s intestate, received by the defendant in 1843 or ’4.
    
      The defendant would have set up a discount for a sum of money previously received by the plaintiff, belonging to him. To the allowance of this discount, the plaintiffs, at the trial, presented the objection that it was barred by the statute of limitations. More than four years had passed from the receipt of the money to the bringing of this action.
    The PresidiNG Judge says: I thought I was bound to allow the objection. There never has been any practice, with which I am acquainted, which requires pleading to a discount. There is an old case which, if I remember right, permits objections, and particularly the statute of limitations, to be presented ore terms. There was nothing like mutual accounts in the case, nor was there any evidence that the money received by defendant was in payment of that previously received by the plaintiff’s intestate. The sums were nearly though not quite equal. There was great intimacy between the intestate and the defendant; I think they once were partners in buying and selling negroes.
    The decree was for the plaintiff.
    The defendant appealed, and moved the Court of Appeals to reverse the decree of his • Honor, rejecting the discount of the defendant, on the grounds following, viz:
    1. That the discount of the defendant ought to have been allowed, because to the said discount no plea of the statute of limitations or notice of it was given until after the trial had been commenced, and because the bar .of the statute ought not to have been applied. On the grounds, first that there were mutual accounts between the parties, and secondly, that the payment to the defendant, through Thomas Bates, in 1843 or ’4, should, under- the circumstances, have been applied as a credit on defendant’s demands.
    Griffin, for the motion.
    Carroll, contra.
    
   Per Curiam.

In this case, the point ruled below, that the statute of limitations might be objected ore tenus to the defendant’s discount, seems to have been settled in Turnbull v. Strohecker, 4 McC. 211. The other questions made in the case need no comment. The motion is dismissed.