Lehigh Coal & Navigation Co. v. Blakeslee

189 Pa. 13 | Pa. | 1899

Opinion by

Mb. Justice McCollum,

That the question presented by the appeal was carefully considered by the learned president of the common pleas clearly appears in his opinion. It is admitted therein that a diligent effort was made by court and counsel to find a case plainly corresponding in its facts with the case at bar, and that they were unable to do so. The counsel, however, cited cases in which they claimed that, questions analogous to the question under consideration were discussed and determined. But these cases were not all alike in their facts, nor were the questions decided in them the same. The plaintiff relied upon one class of them as authority for its contention, and the defendant upon another class as furnishing a sufficient warrant for the judgment he obtained. Many cases relating to actions on warranties of title to real estate were cited by the former as establishing the' familiar and well settled rule that “ to sustain an action upon a covenant of general warranty an actual eviction must be averred and proved.” But it seems to us that these and other cases cited as authority for the plaintiffs contention that the cause of action did not accrue until November 5, 1897, are inapplicable to the case at bar. They are certainly unlike it in their facts, and the conclusions drawn from them and contended for by the plaintiff are seemingly not adapted to it.

The cases cited,by the defendant are notin their facts exactly like the case in hand, but there is a noticeable analogy between them and the latter. A brief reference to a few of them will show their relation to and bearing upon the present issue. It was held in Mead v. McDowell, 5 Binney, 195, that if A guarantees to B the performance of any contract he may make with C, and six years elapse after the contract between B and C and before the bringing of any suit against A upon his guaranty, no acknowledgment of C subsequent to the contract can take the case out of the statute of limitations as to A. The statute runs from the making of the contract, and as no suit was brought upon the guaranty within six years from that time, it was a bar to a subsequent suit. In Owen v. Western Saving Fund, 97 Pa. 47, it was held (1) that in an action upon the case against a recorder of deeds for damages suffered by reason of a false certificate of search given by the recorder to the plaintiff, in the absence of fraud, the statute of limitations begins to run from the time when the search was given and not from the development of the damage. (2) It is immaterial that the party who received and paid for the search had no knowledge of its falsity or cause for inquiry until more than six years after it was given. The cause of action, within the meaning of the statute of limitations, was the issuing of the false certificate. The right of action accrued to the plaintiff as soon as it parted with its money on the faith of it, and from that period the statute began to run. (8) With reference to the statute of limitations there is no distinction between trusts arising from contracts and those which arise from official misfeasance. In Binney’s Appeal, 116 Pa. 169, a party satisfied a mortgage by mistake, in which there was no element of fraud. More than six years after the commission of the mistake the party injured by it brought suit to which the statute of limitations was held to be a bar, although he had no knowledge of the mistake until the statute had run against it. In Moore v. Juvenal, 92 Pa. 484, it was held (1) that in an action against an attorney at law for neglecting to prosecute a claim until it was barred by the statute of limitations, where there was no fraud or concealment on the part of the attorney, the plea of the bar of the statute is a good defense. (2) Where the declaration in such a case alleges a breach of duty and special consequential damages, the breach of the duty and not the consequential damage is the cause of the action, and the statute runs from the time of the former, and not from the time the special damage is revealed or becomes definite. These cases, together with the cases cited in them and in the opinion of the learned president of the court below, are believed to be applicable to the contention of the defendantdn this case. It is conceded that there was no element of fraud in his guaranty of the signature, and that he made it on the representation of a party then in good repute and in whom he had entire confidence. The signature guaranteed purported to be the signature of Elizabeth Baker to an irrevocable power of attorney to transfer fifty shares of the stock of the Lehigh Coal and Navigation Company. It was, however, a forged signature. It was guaranteed by the defendant on September 10,1890, and the stock was transferred by the company on November 6,1890, more than seven years before this suit was brought.

It was held by the learned court below that the implied promise of the guarantor was broken when it was made, and that the right of action accrued and the statute of limitations run from the date of the guaranty. It seems to us that this is a reasonable and just view of the case; that it is supported by the rulings in the cases to which particular reference has been made herein, and by the rulings in the cases cited as authority for them. We therefore overrule the assignments of error.

The order discharging the rule for want of. a sufficient affidavit of defense is affirmed.