10 Pa. 120 | Pa. | 1848
The rent sought to be recovered in this action was, by the terms of the demise, payable on the 1st of May, 1843. The lessee, the now plaintiff in error, was decreed a bankrupt on the 30th of December, 1842.
Was the demand now made proveable under the bankrupt act of 1841? All claims and demands, existing at the date of the decree of bankruptcy, were so proveable; and, by the proviso of the fifth section, it was enacted that “All creditors, whose debts are not due and payable until a future day; all annuitants, holders of bottomry and respondentia bonds, holders of policies of insurance, sureties, endorsers, bail, or other persons having uncertain or contingent demands against such bankrupt, shall be permitted to come in and prove such debts,” &c. Under this provision, a present debt or duty, though not payable until after the bankruptcy, might be proved. But it was clearly otherwise, where the debt did not actually exist at the . time of the decree, though before that there was a covenant or agreement, from which a claim might thereafter arise, or a debt spring into existence. Thus, a covenant to pay money on demand was held to be prove-able, if demand was made before bankruptcy, but otherwise, not; for, before demand, there was no duty incumbent on the covenantor: Ex parte Campbell, 16 Ves. 248. So, too, it was determined that a bond to replace stock by a given time, might be proved, if the breach of it occurred prior to the' bankruptcy; but not where the time stipulated for replacing the stock did not arrive until afterwards: Ex parte King, 8 Ves. 334. Upon the same principle, before the statute 49 Geo. 3, c. 121, which gave the annuitant a remedy, from thence adopted by the American act, an annuity was not proveable, when not secured by a forfeited annuity bond, which, says C. J. Gibson, “ enabled the courts to let the annuitant in to prove as a creditor for the penalty, taken by a legal subtlety, to be the debt at law.” The rule is the same, where the consideration of an agreement is prospective, and does not, in fact, arise
The ruling of the court below is, consequently, right.
Judgment affirmed.