Case ID: ky_2/html/0286-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

NOVEMBER 2, 1803.
    William Owens v. Peter Pennebaker.
    
      Upon a writ of error to reverse a judgment of the Quarter Sessions Court of Nelson county.
    
    A statute permitted money lost at gaming to be recovered by action commenced within three months. Where the money was lost on the 1st of May, 1799, and the record did not show when the writ was sued out, but the declaration was not filed until October, 1801, the court presumes that the writ was not sued out within the time prescribed by the act.
   As this action was brought to recover money lost at the game of billiards, it was indispensably necessary that the writ (if there was one) should have appeared in the record, in order to show that the action was instituted within the time limited by the act of assembly which gives the right of recovery in such cases. But as the declaration states the money to have been lost on the first day of May, 1799, and it appears by the record that the declaration was filed at the rules on the 17th day of October, 1801, the presumption is so strong that the right of action was lost before the commencement of the suit, that nothing but the production of the writ proving the contrary can destroy it. The proceedings, therefore; being radically defective, supersedes the necessity of considering any but the first and third errors which have been assigned, as those of themselves are sufficient to produce a reversal of the judgment.

Therefore, it is considered by the court, that the judgment aforesaid be reversed, annulled and set aside, and that the plaintiff recover against the said defendant his costs by him about his suit in this behalf expended, which is ordered to be certified to the Nelson circuit court.