delivered the opinion of the court.
William O. Johnson and wife, in May, 1857, presented, for allowance in the county court, an account against Smith’s
The term trust, in its general sense, has a wide scope, and is applied to a great variety of the transactions of life. Every bailment is a trust, and the relation of trustee and cestui que trust is created whenever one person receives money for another’s use, or engages to apply it to a particular purpose and fails to do so. In such cases a certain and ordinary remedy exists at law; and a defendant can not be denied the protection of the statute by calling him a trustee and suing
The facts in this record present nothing more than the case of one person receiving money for another’s use, which could have been recovered under the common counts in an action of assumpsit for money had and received; and the essential character of the transaction was not changed by the intestate’s calling himself the plaintiff’s guardian. If he had been a regular guardian duly appointed, he might have retained the money until ordered by the court, from which his authority was derived, to pay it over, or until his ward became of age; but, as the facts of the case appear, he could have been compelled, at any time, at the pleasure of Mrs. Johnson, to account and pay to her all he had received.
It can not be said that there was no limitation on the right of action, and that the statute did not apply at all to the case, and, if time did not begin to run against the demand when Mrs. Johnson became of age, there is no period at which the cause of action was brought within the operation of the statute of limitations. That can not be, for this action is not distinguishable from the ordinary one of money received by one person to be paid to another, in which case limitation would begin not from the time of demand and refusal, but from the time there was a cause of action, which accrued when the money was received.
It was decided in the case of the State, to the use of Whaley,
The judgment will be reversed and the cause remanded;