124 Mo. App. 58 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1907
Appellant obtained judgment against respondent before a justice of the peace on June 5, 1895. The next day an execution was issued on the judgment and in due season was returned nulla bona. On March 5, 1900, nearly five years after the judgment had been rendered, appellant caused a certified transcript of it to be filed in the office of the clerk of the circuit court of Ralls county, the county in which the judgment had been obtained. ■ Three years later (1903) appellant filed a petition in the circuit court of said county, asking that the judgment be revived. On the trial in the circuit court appellant offered in evidence the certified transcript of the justice’s judgment on file in the office of the circuit clerk, testified that the judgment never had been paid, and. rested. Thereupon the court sustained a demurrer to said evidence and this appeal was taken. It was pointedly decided by the Supreme Court in Pears v. Goff, 76 Mo. 92, that a transcript of a justice’s judgment cannot be filed, with any efficacy, in the office of the clerk of the circuit court more than three years after the rendition of the judgment without first reviving it. After threé years, unless the judgment is revived, it is described as “dormant — in a state of suspended animation.” According to the opinion in the case cited, nothing can be done toward enforcing the judgment of the justice while it is in that State, either by taking a transcript to the office of the circuit clerk, or by issuing an
The judgment of the circuit court is affirmed.