58 Mo. App. 106 | Mo. Ct. App. | 1894
This action is founded upon a judgment originally rendered by a justice of the peace in the'state of Kansas on the fifteenth day of May, 1885. On the eighth day of April, 1892, a transcript of such judgment was filed in the district court of the state of Kansas, a court of record. This suit is based, on a duly authenticated copy of the judgment as it appears in the latter court. Defendant pleaded the five years clau-se of our statute of limitations in bar of the action. R. S. 1889, sec. 6775. The judgment of the trial court was for plaintiff.
The sole question relates to the defendant’s plea of the statute of limitations. It has been expressly decided
The effect of these statutes is simply to add to the force and effect of the judgment of the justice. They widen its comprehension but do not make it the judgment of the district court. In the first place it is en-i tered on the judgment docket of the district court in' the manner a judgment of that court is entered. It is then declared to be. a lien on real estate in the same manner and to the same extent as if it had been a judg
It seems that in the state of Kansas, filing a tran-' script of such a judgment has been construed to have the effect of transferring the judgment to the district court so that execution thereon can not afterwards be had from the justice, Rahm v. Soper, 28 Kan. 529, but this by no means amounts to an assertion that the judgment is the judgment of the district .court, but rather that the fruits of the judgment of the justice of the peace shall be gathered through the process of the district court.
Our statute declares that a judgment rendered by a justice of the peace shall be barred, unless suit be instituted thereon within five years after the cause of action shall have accrued. Cooms v. Moore, supra. The cause of action accrued on this judgment on the day it was rendered by the justice, and we are at a loss to under
By the express terms of the Kansas statutes which we have noted above, the judgment of the justice of the peace, upon a transcript thereof being filed in the district court would support an execution thereon from the district court and the execution would be governed by the same procedure as on judgments rendered in the district court. On a similar statute in Arkansas, to which plaintiff calls our attention, it was held that the period of time in which an execution might issue on judgments of courts of record would apply to an execution issued on a transcript judgment from a justice of the peace and that the period would run from the time the transcript was filed. Burr v. Engles, 24 Ark. 283. (See, also, Carpenter v. King, 42 Mo. 219.) But this is the effect of the express provision of the statute governing the procedure to be had upon a judgment. Furthermore, these considerations do not touch the question presented by defendant’s appeal, which relate to the limitation upon the judgment itself.
The cases of Dieffenboch v. Roch, 112 N. Y. 621 and Harris v. Clark, 65 Hun, 361, are authorities in point. In the former case it is shown that the statute of limitations read “rendered in a court not of record.” But a judgment rendered in a court is no more than a judgment rendered by a court; and either expression means, in the absence of a statute giving other meaning, that it is the judgment of a court. As shown in that case, the statute of New York reads that after filing a transcript from the justice “thenceforth the judgment is deemed the judgment of the county court of the county and must be enforced accordingly,” thus coming nearer than in Kansas to a statutory declaration that it was a
The foregoing views lead to a reversal of the judgment and it is so ordered.