Case ID: nc_4-2/html/0266-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Hall J. Seawell, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

MARGARET ARMSTRONG against SIMONTON's ADMINISTRATORS.
    ■Where a De. adversely a claimed un, dér a feme riage, th<f husbaiid and join ¡ where lep, the right of til e husband accrues píete'upon" themarriage and the1 pos-badéeíshfs6 session,
    This was ah action of detinue brought to recover a fe-siave an¿ her three children, elaimed under the following circumstances. The slave Agá, the mother of the, children, was owned by the Plaintiff, whose daughter in-termayried with Simqnton, the Defendant’s intestate then residént \a Georgia. Sorpe years after tl\e marriage he visit to the Plaintiff who told him .to take Agá home wfth him, and Jo keep her in the event of his survi-but: if she, the Plaintiff survived, 4fd should contj-nue ⅛ be hers. The Defendant took Air a accordingly ' _ ' and kept her m possession many years. Alter the loan or the Plaintiff intermarried, with Abel Armstrong. who died before Sfimonton,
    
    The Judge before whom the cause was tried, instruct-? ed the Jury that if the transaction was a loan determinable at; the will of the lender, and. there was no adverse Possession set up, the property vested absolutely in Abel Armstrong on his intermarriage with the Plaintiff, and thát his executors cquld alone recover it. The Jury found for the Defendant, and the case is sent here on a motion for a new trial.
    
      
      
         LoWBIE.
    
   Hall J.

If the Plaintiff’s husband had thought proper to have brought an action of detinue for the negroes in question;; and it would have been necessary to have joined his wife with him in the action, it follows, that as no action was brought the property survived to her ; and it has been decided in Johnson & Wife v. Pasteur, As well as in several other cases, that it was necessary to make the wife a party, because she was the meritorious cause of action. But I think those cases are unlike tjie present, hecause there the Defendants held adversely ; here the Defendant Claims under the bailment of the wife when sole, and it seems to be admitted in the case of Johnson & Wife, v. Pasteur, that when the Defendant is a trustee for the husband, that the'husband mdy brjng the suit in his name, in other words, that the possession of the bailee tyas the possession of the husband, and that therefore -the right of the husband was complete. ,.

Seawell, J.

From the statement in this case, the slave was either given or loaned.

If giver}, the Plaintiff ,cannot recover; and if loaned, the possession of the bailee was the possession flffrthe bailor,, and the property necessarily passed to the husband of the Plaintiff by the intermarriage. The action therefore cannot be sustained. The rule for a new trial must be dis.charged, ‘ , 
      
      
         Confer. Rep. 464