Case ID: ohio_12/html/0021-01.html
Source: Caselaw Access Project
Author: {"author": "Wood, Judge.", "license": "Public Domain", "url": "https://static.case.law/"}
Date Created: 2024-08-24T03:29:51.129683

David Putnam, for the use of the Bank of Marietta, v. David Rees.
    Whether the action of debt on simple contract, where the liability accrued under the statute of limitations, of 1804, and 1810, is barred by the subsequent acts. Quere.
    
    The case of Hazlett v. Critehfield et al., 1 Ohio, 153, considered.
    Where there is an equal division of the court upon the question of sustaining a demurrer, the demurrer is overruled.
    This is an action of Debt, from the' county of Fairfield.
    The plaintiff counts orfa promissory note, bearing date the 21st day of October, 1807, executed in the county of Fairfield, and payable sixty days after date, to Samuel Kratzer, or his order, at the store of Benj. Ives Grillman, in Marietta, tor $2000, which note is indorsed by the payee, to the plaintiff. The declaration, also, contains the common counts in debt.
    To this declaration, the defendant plead.
    First: Nil debet;
    
    Second : In bar, that the causes of action did toot, nor did either of them, accrue within six years next before the commencement of this suit;
    
      * Third: That the said causes of action did not, nor did either of them, accrue within fifteen years next before the commencement of this suit.
    To the second plea, the plaintiff replied, that the said causes of action accrued, and were evidenced, by simple contract, and not by specialty; and that the said causes of action accrued before the 25th day of February, 1824, and after the 4th day of January, 1804.
    To the third plea, the replication is the same, in substance.
    To these replications, the defendant demurred, and plaintiff joined in demurrer.
    The case was argued by H. H. Hunter, for the plaintiff,
    who contended that the action of debt, on simple contract, was not barred by the act of 1804, in force at the time the cause of action accrued.
    That it has been well settled, that debt, on simple contract, was not barred by the act of 1810, and that the subsequent acts, of 1824, 1826, and 1831, barring debt on simple contract, applied only to causes of action accruing after their passage.
    H. Stanbery and T. Ewing, for defendant,
    insisted that, upon a •proper construction of the act of 1824, the action was barred. But, to remove doubts upon the question, the act of 1826 was passed. And the act of 1831, in its express terms, was made to apply to -causes of action which subsisted under former acts.
    It was also urged, that the doctrine laid down in the ease of Hazlett v. Critchfield et al., 7 Ohio, part II, 153, was not tenable.
   Wood, Judge.

The question intended to be presented by the demurrer, is, as we Understand it, whether, as the act of 1804, in force when the cause of action, as laid in this declaration, accrued, does not bar the action of debt on simple contract, it is barred by either of the subsequent acts of limitation.

* It is not claimed that the act of 1810 is a bar for the action -of debt, for rent only is enumerated in that act; but it is insisted, the act of 1824, as explained by that of 1826, and the act of 1831, bar the plaintiff’s claim.

I can only say, the court are equally divided in opinion, two of the judges holding, upon the authority of the ease of Hazlett et al. v. Critchfield et al, 7 Ohio, part II, 153, that all actions, and causes of action, must be governed by the limitation law, in force when the -cause, or causes, of action accrued ; and two others holding that the causes of action, as laid, are barred by the acts of 1824, 1826, and 1831, and that the ease of Hazlett et al. v. Critchfield et al. is not law. There not being, therefore, a majority of the court in favor of sustaining the demurrer to the replications, the same is overruled. Judgment for plaintiff.