Court Opinion

ID: 9829727
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-01 19:33:51.037513+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:43:04.849216
License: Public Domain

ON MOTION FOB BEHEAEING.
There is nothing presented in the motion for rehearing that tends to establish that there is any error in the opinion of this court. That part of it relating to the opinion in answer to the certified question was written with the most profound respect for the Supreme Court, and with the intention merely to give reasons for holding as we did in our original opinion.
In connection with the position of this court on the matter of limitations, we desire to call attention to Wood on Limitations, third edition, section 41, page 101. It is stated by the author that the person for whose benefit the statute inures may, by contract, waive his right, to set up the statutory bar, and in that case the statute is quieted up to, and begins to run afresh from, the time when the contract or agreement was entered into; but while he may by a positive act, as by an agreement not to set up the statute, deprive himself of its benefits, he can not be prevented from relying upon it at law, by a merely equitable estoppel.” As said in the case of Bank v. Waterman, 26 Connecticut, 324, which is cited by Wood: “Strong equitable considerations in favor of the present plaintiffs seem to grow out of the fact that they were actually betrayed into ignorance of their rights by the wrongful acts of the defendant himself; that they were misled by the very record to which they might and should rightfully refer for knowledge of their rights, and of which the defendant was himself the author, having verified it under his official oath. It is palpably unjust for the defendant to set up the statute as a defense under such circumstances. To do so is, in one sense, taking advantage of his own wrong. Tet it is difficult to see that he is not, by the clear provisions of *306the statute itself, protected in so doing; nor are we aware of any well established doctrine by which a party, in a court of law, can be prohibited, on the score of equitable estoppel, from defending himself under a public statute, designed to be of universal application in the matter of legal remedies.” We keep in view that our courts have both legal and equitable jurisdiction, but if they did not have, and separate courts were provided,, they would be bound by the rule that “equity follows the law,” that it obeys it and conforms to its mandates, and where a particular remedy is given by law and that remedy bounded and prescribed by particular rules, it would be improper for a court of equity to take it up and extend it farther than the law allows.
The motion for rehearing is overruled.

Overruled.

Writ of error refused.
James, Chief Justice, did not-sit in this ease.