61 Iowa 38 | Iowa | 1883
— I. The defendant, among other defenses, pleaded the statute of limitations. The last item of the account is of the date March 2, 1875. There are two credits upon the account, one of $50 cash, paid April 30, 1875, and the other $12 y-jy-Q- cash, paid June 11, 1877. The evidence establishes the facts to be that, between the dates of the last item of account and the first credit, defendants, ceasing business, sold their stock in trade to one Mitchell, who undertook to pay the indebtedness incurred in their business, and that the first credit is for a payment made by Mitchell, and the second for a payment made after his death by his administrator, the account having been filed by plaintiffs as a claim against Mitchell’s estate. There is evidence tending to show that, after the sale by defendants, they, Mitchell and plaintiffs, agreed that plaintiffs were to look alone to Mitchell for payment.
The transaction, is simply .this: defendants were indebted on the account to plaintiffs; they sold out and quit business, arranging to pay plaintiff's by means of Mitchell’s undertaking to discharge their debt. It is plain that the account was then closed, and that it did not afterwards exist as a “continuous, open, current account,” as contemplated by Code, section 2531. Mitchell’s payments upon his own indebtedness operated as payments jpro tanto upon the account against the defendants, which had ceased to be “continuous, open and. current.” They are not items of the account from the date of which the statute of limitations begins to run, under Code, § 2531
Affirmed.