24 Mo. App. 378 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1887
delivered the opinion of the court.
The plaintiff is the holder of six coupons issued by the St. Louis County Railroad Company, a corporation whose property was sold when it became insolvent and ceased to do business, in June, 1877. This suit was commenced before a justice of the peace, on June 3, 1885. The coupons were for thirty-five dollars each, and only one of them matured and became payable within five years before the commencement of the suit. Judgment was rendered for the plaintiff on this coupon in the circuit court, on appeal.
The defendant sets up the statute of limitations, and claims that this began to run in his favor from the dissolution of the corporation. The plaintiff holds that it began to run, as to the present proceeding, at the maturity of the coupons. The question thus raised was fully considered by us in McGinnis v. Barnes (23 Mo. App. 413), in our present term. Our conclusion was, that the statute began to run from the maturing of the coupons, as the plaintiff here claims, and we find nothing in the elaborate argument for the present appellant, or elsewhere, which indicates that our conclusion was wrong. We re-affirm the. views there expressed.
The defendant contends that his subscription for stock in the corporation, as to which he is charged as the holder of ten shares of the par value of one hundred dollars per share, upon which he has paid the sum of forty-five dollars per share, was conditional; and that, by reason of failure of the conditions on the part of the
It was admitted at the' trial that the condition for a subscription of forty thousand dollars had been fulfilled. The defendant contends, however, that he was entitled to show (which the court disallowed), that no ties or rails were ever delivered or laid ; holding that these failures constituted a breach of the conditions of his subscription, whereby he is released from the obligations of a stockholder. This contention can not be sustained. The only condition upon which the binding force of the subscription depended, was that with reference to an aggregate subscription of forty thousand dollars. The other terms in the instrument related only to matters of internal economy in the management of the funds by the trustee, after the money from the stockholders had been actually paid into his hands. The propriety of such management was purely a subject of accountability between him and the stockholders, and had nothing to do with the finality of their positions as stockholders. If
The judgment of the circuit court was right, and is, therefore, affirmed,