Case ID: mass_14/html/0176-01.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

John Hall versus Henry Little.
    Foreigners, who have never been in'the United Stales, are within the exception of the statute for the limitation of personal actions, and may bring their action within the time limited by the statute, after their coming within the States.
    
    To this action of assumpsit, besides the general issue, the defendant pleaded that he did not make the promises alleged by the plaintiff at any time within six years before the commencement of the plaintiff’s action.
    The plaintiff replied that, at the times of making the several promises in the declaration mentioned, he, the said Hall, was in foreign parts beyond the seas, and without any of the United States, viz., at Antigua, in the West Indies, and had continued and remained beyond seas, without any of the United States, from thence to the time of the purchase of his writ.
    To this replication the defendant demurred, and assigned * for cause, that the plaintiff is a foreigner, and never was an inhabitant of, or resident in, this or any other of the United States.. The plaintiff joined in demurrer.
    
      Bellard, for the defendant,
    argued that, the plaintiff being a foreigner, the provision in the statute of limitations did not extend to him. It was intended only for the relief of our own citizens. It contemplates their return to this country, which is considered as an impediment removed. Neither of these could be predicated of one who had never been in the country.
    
      S. E. Smith, for the plaintiff.
    The statute has not excluded foreigners from the benefit of the provision, nor is there any reason, consistent with good policy and the comity of nations, why they should be excluded. . This was the point taken in the case of Strithorst vs. Graeme, 
       upon the English statute of limitations; and the court there say, “ If the plaintiff is a foreigner, and doth not come to England in fifty years, he still hath six years, after his coming to England, to bring his action; and if he never comes tc 
      England himself, he has always a right of action while he lives abroad, and so have his executors or administrators after his death.”
    
      
       3 Wils. 145.
    
   Per Curiam.

The provision of the act for the limitation of personal actions, &e., which is relied on by the plaintiff, is that the act “ shall not be understood to bar any infant, feme covert, person imprisoned, or beyond sea,, without any of the United States, &c., from bringing either of the actions before mentioned within the term before set and limited for bringing such action, reckoning from the time that such impediment shall be removed.” It is probably not an uncommon notion that this provision was not contemplated to extend to foreigners. But the authority cited from Wilson's Reports in the argument is conclusive on the construction of the English statute of limitations. The expressions of that statute are like those of ours ; and this latter must receive the same construction,

Replication adjudged good. 
      
      
        Slat. 1786, c. 52.
     
      
      
         [See Revised Statutes, c. 120, § 6. — Bulger vs. Roche, 11 Pick. 36.— Wilson vs. Appleton, 17 Mass. Rep. 180. —Ed.]