Court Opinion

ID: 9688668
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 18:00:01.457261+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:18:41.070992
License: Public Domain

On Application for Rehearing
SIMPSON, Justice.
It is argued by appellees that the alleged setoff sought to be asserted was equitable as contradistinguished from a legal one and that the authorities cited in support of our conclusion on original deliverance are inapplicable. Rather than respond to that contention, we prefer to further illustrate the futility of appellees’ case by mentioning another defense which was interposed. We indicated supra that there were other defenses which might be mentioned. One in particular impresses us as unquestionably putting the appellees’ case out of court. That is prescription.
The bill sought an accounting and to rest the setoff on an item (the balance due appellees by the mortgage foreclosure sale) carried in the account. The last entry in the account was made more than twenty years prior to the filing of the bill and thereafter there was never any admission or recognition on the part of the respondent of any right in the appellees or obligation on his part with respect to the matter. Unquestionably prescription bars the instant suit.
The rule has been variously stated in our cases. One of the better statements which has come under our view in the study of this case is found in Snodgrass v. Snodgrass, 176 Ala. 276, 280-281, 58 So. 201, as follows:
“As a matter of public policy, and for the repose of society, it has long been the settled policy of this state, as of others, that antiquated demands will not be considered by the courts, and that, without regard to any statute of limitations, there must be a time beyond which human transactions will *248not be inquired into. It is settled that, after a period of 20 years, without any payment, settlement, or other recognition of liability, mortgages and liens will be presumed to have been paid, settlements will be presumed to have been made by administrators, trustees, agents, and other persons occupying fiduciary positions. It is necessary for the peace and security of society that there should be an end.of litigation, and it is inequitable to allow those who have slept upon their rights for a period of 20 years, after they might have demanded an accounting, and after, as is generally the case, the memoi-y of transactions has faded and parties and witnesses passed away, to demand an accounting. The concen-sus of opinion in the present day is that such presumption is conclusive, and the period of 20 years, without some distinct act in recognition of the trust, a complete bar; and, as said in an early case, 'the presumption rests not only on the want of diligence in asserting rights, but on the higher ground that it is necessary to suppress frauds, to avoid long dormant claims, which, it has been said, have often more of cruelty than of justice in them, that it conduces to peace of society and the happiness of families, “and relieves courts from the necessity of adjudicating rights so obscured by the lapse of time arid the accidents of life that the attainment of truth and justice is next to impossible.””’
See also Harrison v. Heflin, 54 Ala. 552; Coyle v. Wilkins, 57 Ala. 108; Greenlees v. Greenlees, 62 Ala. 330; Garrett v. Garrett, 69 Ala. 429; Long v. Parmer, 81 Ala. 384, 1 So. 900; Bozeman v. Bozeman, 82 Ala. 389, 2 So. 732; Wilkerson v. Wilkerson, 230 Ala. 567, 161 So. 820; Case v. Conservation & Land Co., 256 Ala. 46, 53 So.2d 562.
In order to avert the application of the doctrine appellees contend that the rule of repose rests on the failure of the claimant to assert rights adverse to his opponent during the prescriptive period and that therefore the effort on their part to plead the setoff in the case of Eatman v. Goodson, 36 Ala.App. 360, 58 So.2d 129, certiorari denied, 257 Ala. 239, 58 So.2d 133, in the proceeding of scire facias to revive the judgments in 1952 had the effect of tolling the prescriptive period even though the setoff in that proceeding was denied. This, is not the law. There are intimations in our cases to the effect that the principle of prescription is affected by whether or not the claimant allows twenty years to elapse without taking any steps to compel a settlement or assert the right. Such cases are Moss v. Davitt, 255 Ala. 513, 52 So.2d 515;, Jellerson v. Pettus, 132 Ala. 671, 32 So. 663; Black v. Pratt Coal & Coke Co., 85 Ala. 504, 5 So. 89; Oxford v. Estes, 229 Ala. 606, 611, 158 So. 534; Bonner v. Young, 68 Ala. 35; Goodwyn v. Baldwin, 59 Ala. 127; Rhodes v. Turner, 21 Ala. 210; Heflin v. Heflin, 208 Ala. 69, 93 So. 719. See also Wise v. Helms, 252 Ala. 227, 40 So.2d 700, holding that lack of notice would prevent the running of the prescriptive period, which holding was repudiated in Merrill v. Merrill, 260 Ala. 408, 71 So.2d 44. Many of the last cited cases were dealing with laches where, of course, lack of notice and rights unasserted enter into a consideration of that principle.
In prescription, however, the mere assertion of a claim does not stop the fun-ning of the period. In order to do so, a right asserted during the twenty years must have eventuated successfully. For analogy see Staten v. Shumate, 243 Ala. 261, 9 So.2d 751.
As was pointed out in Snodgrass v. Snodgrass, supra, quoting from Harrison v. Heflin, 54 Ala. 552, 563-564, the conclusive presumption of payment or satisfaction “ ‘rests not only on the want of diligence in asserting rights, but on the higher ground that it is necessary to suppress frauds, to avoid long dormant claims, which, it has been said, have often more of cruelty than of justice in them * * ’y
As was stated in Hendley v. First Nat. Bank of Huntsville, 234 Ala. 535, 537, 176 So. 348, 349, Id., 235 Ala. 664, 180 So. 667, “The basic principle of prescription is not the mere lapse of time, but the lapse of *249time within which no recognition of a subsisting and continuing right or obligation appears.”
It results, therefore, that the claimed set-off was barred by prescription at the time of the institution of the present litigation.
Opinion extended and application for rehearing overruled.
LIVINGSTON, C. J., and STAKELY and GOODWYN, JJ., concur.