Court Opinion

ID: 9810633
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 21:54:58.725059+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:40:07.698519
License: Public Domain

Ashe, J.,
dissenting. I cannot concur in the opinion of the majority of the Court in this case. The note in question was due on the 31st day of January, 1868.- The obligor died in the month of December, 1869, and there was no adminstration on his estate, until the 6th day of September, 1882. His Honor’s instruction to the jury, on the trial below was, that these facts raised a presumption that the bond had been paid, and the statute of presumption had not been rebutted.
The plaintiffs contended that inasmuch as there was no one who could have been sued, from December, 1869, until September, 1882, when the administration was first granted on the estate of the obligor, that fact was sufficient to rebut the presumption of payment, and for the position he relied upon the case of Buie v. Buie, 2 Ired., 87. In that case, the defendant pleaded the act of 1715, and the presumption of payment. The note in that case was given in 1818, and due twelve months after date. Neil Buie, one of the obligors, died in 1823, and there was no administration on his estate until 1837, and the Court below held, that as there was no person to be sued, the presumption of payment was rebutted, and the decision was sustained by this Court. The question of a presumption of payment does not seemed to have been discussed in this Court, but the entire stress of the argument of plaintiff’s counsel, was upon the effect of the act of 1715. A-ll of the authorities cited by Mr. Strange, who argued that case for the- defendant in this Court, had reference only to that statute.
There can be no doubt that the action in that case was barred by the act of 1715, for the debt was due when the debtor died, and at the time of his death there was a creditor who might have sued, and that was all that was necessary to put that statute in operation — Jones v. Brodie, 3 Murphey, 594 — so that there was *771do necessity for deciding the other question of the presumption of payment. There is a marked distinction between the act of 1826, the statute of presumption, anil the act of 1715. The former begins to run when the action accrues; the latter from the death of the debtor. The Court, in Buie v. Buie, supra, •does not seem to have given particular consideration to the fact that there were five years intervening between the maturity of the note and the death of the debtor, in all of which time the debtor might have been sued. In fact, the opinion of the Court was almost entirely directed to the operation of the act of 1715, and only a passing reference was made to the statute of presumption. If the debtor had died before the note fell due, and ten years had elapsed before administration on his estate, there ■can be no question, upon the authorities and the reason of the thing, that the statute would not bar, nor would any presumption arise from the forbearance to sue, because there would have been no one who could be sued. This, we think, is the true distinction.
If Buie v. Buie, supra, be law, we do not see how it is to be reconciled with the subsequent decisions of this Court. In the case of Powell v. Brinkley, Busb. Law, 154, Pearson, Judge, who decide the case of Buie v. Bide, in the Court below, speaking for the Court, used this language: “When one is absent and unheard of for more than seven years, theie is a presumption of his death; but there is no presumption as to the time of his death, for there is nothing to refer it to one time more than another. But when there is a presumption of payment, from lapse of time, it is otherwise, for there is a day fixed when the payment ought to have been made,” and in support of the position, he cited, Best on Presumption, §§137 — 140; and in the more recent case of Grant v. Burgwyn, 84 N. C., 560, when the question under consideration was, whether the presumption of payment was rebutted by the insolvency of the debtor, Judge Ruffin, in delivering the opinion of the Court, said : “The only true rule in such a case is, to require such a state of insolvency to be shown to have *772existed during the entire ten years next after the maturity of the debt, as will -prove that ¿he debtor did not pay, because he could, not, and nothing short of this will the law permit to destroy its-own inference arising from the lapse of time. Besides this, in a case like the present, the presumption of payment, unlike that which is raised of the death of a party, from his being continually absent and unheard of for seven years, is by law referred to-a period of time, and has relation to the day on which the debt became due.” According to the rule laid down in this case, supported by the decision in Powell v. Brinkley, supra, if the debtor had been solvent for nearly two years after the maturity of the debt, his subsequent insolvency for teu years would not have been allowed to rebut the presumption of payment.
Upon what principle then, can a distinction be made between the ease where insolvency is relied upon to rebut the presumption of payment, and that, as in this case, where the absence of a person to be sued is relied on for the same purpose? If in the former case, the entire period of ten years, commencing from the maturity of the debt, must be shown to rebut the presumption,, why, by anology, must- it not be requisite to be shown, in order to rebut the presumption, that for ten entire years, beginning from the maturity of the debt, there was no one in existence against whom an action could be brought? The cases are so analogous, that if the rule will hold good iu the one case, it must in the other.
In our case, the debtor was alive and could have been sued at auy time before his death, which occurred about twenty months after the maturity of the note. The presumption of payment arises within ten years after the right of action accrues. Rev. Code, ch. 65, §18. The action accrues when the note becomes due, provided there is a person to sue and one to be sued. When that is so, this statute of presumption begins to run, like the statute of limitation, from the maturity of the note, -and like that statute, no disability subsequently arising, will arrest its progress. It was so held in this Court in Hall v. Gibbs, 87 N. *773C., 4. There the creditor had died after the maturity of the note sued on, and it was held, that as the statute of presumption had begun to run against him when alive, his subsequent death did not obstruct the running of the statute. The principle there ■decided is applicable to this case, mutatis mutandis, and see also Tucker v. Baker, decided at this Term.
I am not inadvertent to the fact of the very eminent abilities ■of the distinguished jurists who made the decision in the case of Buie v. Buie, and I would confess the imputation of presumption in setting up my unsupported individual opinion against that of a Court so constituted, but what I contend is, that subsequent decisions of the Court are inconsistent with it, and I rely ■upon the fact, as heretofore stated, that the case was made to turn mainly upon the act of 173 5, and that the effect of the act of 1826, was but slightly considered, and upon the more recent ■opinion of Pearson, C. J., in the case of Powell v. Brinkley, supra, and Judge Ruffin’s opiniou in Grant v. Burgwyn, supra, and the still more recent decision of this Court in the case of Hall v. Gibbs, supra, concurred in by all the Judges then constituting this Court.