Braun v. Sauerwein/Opinion of the Court

by William Strong

United States Supreme Court

77 U.S. 218

Braun  v.  Sauerwein

It is undoubtedly a general principle, that when a statute of limitation has begun to run, a disability to sue subsequently intervening does not stop its running, even though the disability be one of those expressly recognized in the statute itself. Notwithstanding this, however, the courts in this country have engrafted upon such statutes at least one implied exception. Thus, in Hopkins v. Bell, ^[1] this court held that the treaty of peace of 1783, by which the independence of the United States was acknowledged by Great Britain, prevented the operation of a Virginia statute of limitations upon debts due to British subjects, and contracted before the treaty was made. In that case, though the statute had begun to run before the commencement of the war in 1775, the time during which it had thus run was not allowed to be added to any time subsequent to the treaty. This, perhaps, is not to be regarded as a clearly judicial exception, incorporated into the Virginia statute. It was rested upon the force of the treaty which declared that creditors on either side (British or American), should meet with no lawful impediment to the recovery of the full value, in sterling money, of all bona fide debts theretofore contracted. The treaty, however, was not the act of Virginia, and the suspension of the statute's operation was by something outside of the statute itself. But in Hanger v. Abbott ^[2] it was ruled, after grave consideration, that the time during which the courts of the recently rebellious States were closed to the citizens of other States, is, in suits brought by such citizens, to be excluded from the computation of the time fixed by statutes of limitation, within which only suits may be brought, and this, though the statutes contain no such exception. In other words, it was held that the statutes of limitations of the insurrectionary States were suspended, while the courts in those States were closed by the war. Similar decisions have been made in the State courts. They all rest on the ground that the creditor has been disabled to sue, by a superior power, without any default of his own, and, therefore, that none of the reasons which induced the enactment of the statutes apply to his case; that unless the statutes cease to run during the continuance of the supervening disability, he is deprived of a portion of the time within which the law contemplated he might sue.

It seems, therefore, to be established, that the running of a statute of limitation may be suspended by causes not mentioned in the statute itself. Assuming, then, that the act of Congress did, for a time, stop the running of the Maryland statute against the plaintiff, the inquiry remains, how long did the suspension continue? To this there can be but one answer. Manifestly, only so long as he was prevented from suing by the act of Congress. The act, speaking from August 1st, 1866, prohibited a suit until he should appeal to the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, and until his appeal should be decided, unless the decision should be postponed longer than six months, in which case he was at liberty to sue within a year from the time when his appeal was taken. The interval between the appeal and its decision, then, was the entire period during which he was disabled by the act. If, in fact, he was disabled a longer time, the prolonged disability was caused by his own neglect to appeal. The replication to the defendant's pleas fail to state when the appeal was made. True, the averment is, it was duly made, but that is pleading a conclusion of law rather than a fact. The time when the appeal was taken was material to show how long the statute of limitation was suspended. The effect of the replication was only to aver that the statute was suspended for a time. Nothing more was well pleaded by it. Instead of meeting it by a demurrer, however, the defendant rejoined, setting forth the date of the appeal, and the date of its decision, and the plaintiff demurred to the rejoinder. It is thus admitted that the plaintiff's appeal was pending only from August 20th, 1867, to January 11th, 1868, four months and twenty-two days. The act of Congress denied to him a right to sue during that period, and no longer. The time which he permitted to elapse between August 1st, 1866 (when the act of Congress took effect), and August 20th, 1868, when he appealed, was not taken from him by any controlling power. He lost it by his own delay. It would be giving a most unreasonable construction to the act were we to hold, that by merely delaying to appeal, when it was all the time in his power, he could have suspended the running of the statute indefinitely. Deducting, then, the four months and twenty-two days, during which his appeal was pending, and during which he was disabled, from the four years and sixteen days that elapsed between the inception of his right to sue and the commencement of his suit, there remain much more than three years in which he was under no disability, except such as was imposed by himself. The judgment of the Circuit Court on the demurrer was, therefore, correct.

It remains only to add that the case was well removed into the Circuit Court of the United States. ^[3]

JUDGMENT AFFIRMED WITH COSTS.

Notes

1. 3 Cranch, 454.
2. 6 Wallace, 532.
3. Hodgson v. Milward, 3 Grant, 412 and 418; Bigelow v. Forrest, 9 Wallace, 339.