Case ID: scl_14/html/0281-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "JohNSon, J.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

The State Bank vs. Thos. Baker.
    
      ¿. sfcccnd writ cannot be considered as an alias, if it be issued more than a year and a day after the first, and all the intermedíale writs must be regularly lodged with the sheriff, and cannot, at a subsequent period, be made out, so as to fill up the intermediate numbers, to prevent the statute of limitations.
    This was an action of assumpsit on a promissory note, which became due 1st Jan. 1815. An original writ was sued out on 30th Dec. 1815, which was returned non est inventus. A second writ, entitled & pluries, and on which these proceedings were founded was issued, returnable to October term, 1819. The defendant pleaded the statute of limitations. Plaintiff replied an original sued out within four years, and continuances down to the second writ. On which defendant ¡took issue.
    ^ To support the replication, plaintiff offered in evidence an alias, and pluries writs returnable to all the terms intervening between the first and second writs, which had been inade out by the attorney, and signed by the clerk after the return of the second writ, but had never been lodged in the sheriff’s office.
    The presiding judge, being of opinion that the replication was not supported, nonsuited the plaintiff; and this was a motion to set aside the nonsuit.
   JohNSon, J.

The position contended for in support of this motion is, that on the return of a pluries writ, at any time within four years, after the return of an original, the plaintiff may connect them together, by making out the cos-tinuances out of court, or issue the intermediate writs, and thus save the bar of the statute; and it would seem that this practice is supported by the English authorities. The reasons on which it is founded, are the expence and inconvenience of purchasing a new original, which do not apply to the state of things existing here* and a different practice prevails.

Wm. F. DeSaussure and James Holmes for the motion.

S. D. Miller contra.

The case of Parker vs. Grayson, (1 Nott and M‘Cord 173,) is decisive as to this. There, nearly four years had elapsed between the return of the original and the suing out the alias, and the court sjay that no fiction of law can connect them together, where more than a year has intervened. The same state of facts exists in this case, and the same rule applies. Motion refused.