38 Md. 255 | Md. | 1873
delivered the opinion of the Court.
The cause of action stated in the declaration in this case is a judgment rendered against the appellant in favor of the appellee in the Court of Common Pleas, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on the 26th of April, 1869. The defendant pleaded, among other pleas, that he was never served with, nor had any notice of any process in the action in which the alleged judgment was recovered. The plaintiff replied and relied upon returns of nihil to two successive writs of scire facias upon a judgment recovered by him against the defendant in the said Court of Common Pleas in 1836, and judgment after such returns of nihil in 1869. The defendant rejoined, first that the judgment alleged in the replication as recovered in 1836, was rendered more than twenty years before the issuing of said writs of scire facias, and second, that the defendant was a citizen of Maryland, and had resided therein continuously for more than twenty years next before the alleged writs were issued, and hath since resided in Maryland, and had no actual notice of said writs, or either of them. The plaintiff demurred to these rejoinders, and the Court below sustained the demurrer, and gave judgment thereon in favor of the plaintiff.
The question thus presented by the pleadings is, can a suit be maintained in the Courts of this State upon a judgment of a Court of another State, rendered upon returns of nihil to two successive writs of scire facias issued to revive a judgment in the foreign Court of move
Upon looking to those decisions we find there is in that State no period of limitations prescribed by statute for the bringing of actions upon judgments, yet it has been distinctly'announced as the law there, that if a judgment be suffered to stand for twenty years with no steps in the meantime taken to revive it or keep it alive, in part payment, and no explanation or accounting for the delay, it is presumed to be satisfied, and in such case that presumption is a presumption of law, and the fact of actual payment aud satisfaction is not to be submitted as an open question -for the belief of a jury. Cope vs. Humphreys, 14 Seargt. & Rawle, 15. We have neither seen nor been referred to any decisions of the’ Courts of that State establishing the law differently.
It is well settled that a judgment obtained in a Court of one State cannot be enforced in the Courts and against a citizen of another, unless the Court rendering the judgment has acquired jurisdiction over the defendant by actual service of process upon him, or by his voluntary appearance to the suit and submission to that jurisdiction.
It is also a matter proper perhaps to be noticed, that the judgment on the scire facias appearing in the- record is not in the usual form, that the plaintiff have his execution of- the original judgment for the debt and damages thereby recovered. It is thus stated,. "April 26th, 1869, judgment in open Court for plaintiff against the defendant, for want of an appearance for the defendant, for the sum of one thousand one hundred and eight dollars and ninety-nine cents, ($1,108.99.”) In form it is a judgment by default, and not of revivor, or fiat executio. It is only by calculation that dt is made to appear that the sum for which it is rendered, is the amount of the original judgment with interest thereon from the date of its rendition. We do not however lay stress upon this circumstance, but rest our decision upon the grounds already stated, assuming the judgment on the scire facias to be in proper form as one reviving or directing fiat executio of the original judgment.
Nor do we deem it necessary to enter into an extended examination of the nature and office of the writ of scire facias in such cases and. of the judgment founded'thereon, about which much was. said in argument. In this State, it is clearly settled that though it is a judicial process, yet it so far partakes of the nature of an action, that the defendant may appear and plead to it in the same manner as to an action founded upon an original writ, and the judgment thereon is considered a new judgment, having all the attributes of the original, upon which the scire facias was founded. Milliken vs. Duvall, 7 G. & J., 355; Johnson, Garn. of Cowan vs. Lemmon, 37 Md., 336.
Prom the views expressed, it follows there was error in the judgment on the demurrer, and in the ruling in the third exception, for which the judgment appealed from must he reversed. As this effectually disposes of the case, no opinion need be expressed upon the further question presented by the other exceptions, whether the record was properly admitted in evidence under the plea of nul tiel record.
Judgment reversed.