Court Opinion

ID: 8034472
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-09 03:19:11.015254+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:36:54.340265
License: Public Domain

Rose, J.,
dissenting.
The decision will permit the jury to find that plaintiff, during a period of four years, did not discover he had been defrauded by false representations of value in a transaction through which he acquired title to an apartment house with the resulting right to rentals therefrom in lieu of former income from the consideration paid by him. The effect of such a finding by a jury will prevent the running of the four-year statute of limitations against an action at law to recover damages for the fraud, assuming fraud was com*450mitted. The law applicable to the facts of this case has been stated as follows:
“If the fraud ought to have been discovered, and would have been if reasonable diligence had been exercised by the plaintiff, the statute will run from the time such discovery ought to have been made.” 17 R. C. L. 858, sec. 218; Wright v. Davis, 28 Neb. 479.
In my view of the evidence, the exercise of reasonable diligence would, as a matter of law, have resulted in the discovery of the alleged fraud within the statutory period of four years. Definite facts disclosing a reasonable excuse for the failure to discover the truth within four years are wanting. There is nothing in the record to show that plaintiff did not have ordinary intelligence. - He accumulated, and for years preserved, a considerable fortune. The plea that he did not discover fraud within four years is at variance with the common impulse of rational men to contemplate the value and earning capacity of their property, when income therefrom is a means of livelihood. Rentals from the apartment house were measures of value. They imparted to plaintiff notice of fraud inducing the purchase for a fraudulent consideration, if fraud were committed. Unavoidable knowledge of facts disclosing fraud is equivalent to- a discovery of the fraud. Credulous reliance- on the vendor of the apartment house and on the -agents who represented him in the making of the sale is no excuse for plaintiff’s failure to discover within four years misrepresentations of value in that transaction. The law recognized the competency of plaintiff to testify to the value. of his own property when acquired and did not permit him to disregard the promptings of his own senses, his own sources of information and his own right to redress and, by denying knowledge of the fraud, escape the consequences of his own failure to exercise reasonable diligence.
In my view of the record, the decision of the majority delegates to the jury a power committed to the courts-alone.
Since the jury -are now permitted to prevent the Ib-ar of the statute in cases of this kind, I think the purposes of the *451legislature in limiting the time in which actions at law for fraud may be commenced will often be defeated and the right to litigate stale claims preserved until witnesses disappear. I agree with the district court that the action is barred on the face of the record.