12 Tex. 61 | Tex. | 1854
This suit was brought by White and wife, against the defendant, to recover a negro slave, claimed as the property of the wife. The defence set up in the Court below, was the Statute of Limitations, and the only question presented is one of law. At the time the right of action accrued, Mrs. White was an infant, and she married before arriving at the age of twenty-one, by which the disability of infancy ceased, under our statute. (Hart. Dig. Art. 2420.) The suit was not brought until after two years from her marriage ' and the question is whether she can claim the benefit of the exception in the statute in favor of married women. The Court below charged the jury that she could not; and there was a verdict for the defendant, and judgment; fjrorn
Similar exceptions are to be found in nearly all of the-, statutes of limitation of the several States of the American Union ; and the question has been often decided and adjudicated in England, and in the Courts of the several States, and in the Supreme Court of the United States, whether one of these exceptions can be added to another, after the disability, or exemption existing at the time the right of action accrued, had been removed. It has been so often decided that it cannot now be regarded as an open question. In the case of Demarest and wife v. Winkoop and others (3 John. Ch. 129) that eminent jurist Chancellor Kent has, with his usual ability, and with a degree of laborious research peculiar to him, examined all the cases, both in England and in the several States, on the question, showing a degree of harmony of decision seldom to be found on any other subject, that successive, or cumulative disabilities are not within the policy or sound construction of the statute; and the Chancellor says, “ I am clearly of opinion, that the party can only avail himself of the disabilities existing when the right of action first accrued.” The same doctrine was acknowledged by the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case of Mercer’s Lessee v. Selden (1 Howard, 31;) In that case, Mr. Justice McLane who delivered the opinion of the Court, makes the following quotations from the opinions of the Judges in Parsons v. McCracken and wife, (9 Leigh, 495.) ‘‘ Mr. Justice Parker says, “ speaking of the statute, I am of opinion that cumulative “ disabilities ought not to prevent its operation, and that upon “ a sound construction of the act a party claiming the bene¡St “ of the proviso can only avail herself of the disability exist- “ ing when the right of action first accrued, since otherwise “ the assertion of claims might be postponed for the longest “ life, and possessions disturbed after sixty, eighty, or even
Judgment affirmed.