Opinion ID: 1799508
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Was the Bar of the Statute of Limitations Complete Against Claims of the Owners and Payees to the Disputed Funds Prior to the Effective Date of Mississippi's Act?

Text: The simple answer to this question is yes. The parties stipulated that the funds in issue, which would have otherwise been reportable and payable to the Treasurer as abandoned property, include items which matured and became due, returnable, demandable and payable between July 1, 1962, and June 30, 1976. The time of the running of the statute of limitations commenced on these items on or before June 30, 1976. Applying Mississippi's six-year statute of limitations found in § 15-1-49, Miss. Code Ann., the claims and remedies of the owners and payees to these funds became time-barred on or before June 30, 1982, which is one day prior to the effective date of Mississippi's Act. The chancellor made this express finding: It is undisputed that the claims of the owners and payees to the funds in question became time-barred by the statute of limitations prior to the effective date of Mississippi's Act. (Emphasis added). The effect of the attachment of the bar of the statute of limitations appears well-established in Mississippi. It is beyond dispute that the rights and remedies of the owners and payees to the funds in issue were completely extinguished on or before June 30, 1982. Section 15-1-3, Miss. Code Ann., provides that [t]he completion of the period of limitations prescribed to bar any action, shall defeat and extinguish the right as well as the remedy... . This bar is a vested right, Woodman v. Fulton, 47 Miss. 682 (1873), which cannot be revived. According to Article 4, § 97 of the Mississippi Constitution: The legislature shall have no power to revive any remedy which may have become barred by lapse of time, or by any statute of limitation of this state. An important distinction to be made in the case at bar is that the Companies are not contending that any statute of limitation has run directly against the State in this matter. Instead, the right of the State (through the Treasurer) to require reporting and payment of abandoned property is derivative from the rights of the owners and payees, and it is the running of the statute of limitations against those owners and payees and, therefore, presumed to be abandoned on which the Companies now rely. The Treasurer attempts to equate the Companies' reliance on their vested rights with a prohibited assertion of a statute of limitations directly against the state. To refute this argument, the Companies direct this Court to the Supreme Court of Washington which apparently rejected precisely the same argument in State of Washington, Department of Revenue v. Puget Sound Power & Light Co., 103 Wash.2d 501, 694 P.2d 7 (1985). Citing Pacific Northwest Bell Tel. Co. v. Department of Revenue, 78 Wash.2d 961, 481 P.2d 556 (1971), the Court in the Puget Sound case stated: The Bell Court found that the Department's right to abandoned property is purely derivative and therefore [Washington's statute], which precludes a limitations defense against the state, is inapplicable. Puget Sound, supra, 694 P.2d at 11. Nevertheless, the Treasurer cites Sennett v. Insurance Company of North America, 432 Pa. 525, 247 A.2d 774 (1968), for the proposition that the statute of limitations is merely a procedural requirement, which should not bar the claim of the Treasurer. The Companies distinguish the case by pointing out that the Court in Sennett was considering an escheat procedure in Pennsylvania (i.e., a direct separate and distinct right of action by the state) when it held that even though the substance of the state's right to escheat may be derivative, the procedural requirements of the statute of limitations would not bar the state. The Court in Sennett found that only a specific statutory limitation could operate as a bar against the state.