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These cases are from the lawindexpro database. They are now being transferred to the swarb.co.uk website in a better form. As a case is published there, an entry here will link to it. The swarb.co.uk site includes many later cases.  














Limitation - From: 1800 To: 1849

This page lists 14 cases, and was prepared on 02 April 2018.

 
Swann v Sowell (1819) 2 B and Ald 759
1819


Litigation Practice, Limitation
Where a party effectively admits a claim but only subject to his counterclaim which he seeks to set off against the claim, he does not acknowledge the debt for limitation purposes.

 
A'Court v Cross [1825] EngR 816; (1825) 3 Bing 329; (1825) 130 ER 540
28 Nov 1825

Best CJ
Limitation
Defendant being arrested on a debt more than six years old, said, "I know that I owe the money, but the bill I gave is on a threepenny receipt stamp, and I will never pay it." Held, not such an acknowledgment as would revive the debt agdinst a plea of the statute of limitations. One of the purposes of limitation statutes is to protect defendants against vexing stale claims.
1 Citers

[ Commonlii ]
 
Waters And Another, Executors Of Waters, Deceased, v Tompkins [1835] EngR 334; (1835) 2 CrM & R 723; (1835) 150 ER 306 (B)
1835


Contract, Limitation
The meaning of part payment, to take a case out of the Statute of Limitations, is payment of a smaller on account of a greater sum of money, due from the party making the payment to the party to whom it is made. The appropriation of such part payment of principal, or of payment of interest, to a particular debt, may be shewn by any medium of proof, and does not require an express declaration of the debtor, at the time of the payment, to establish it : it may therefore be proved by previous or subsequent declarations of the debtor; although the fact of the payment must be proved by independent evidence.
[ Commonlii ]
 
Huber v Steiner (1835) 2 Bing NC 203
1835

Tindal CJ
Jurisdiction, Limitation
An action was brought in 1835 on a French promissory note made in 1813 and payable in 1817. The defendant pleaded that by French law an action upon the note was prescribed. Held: On its true construction, French law did not extinguish the debt but only barred the creditor from obtaining a remedy. This was a matter of French procedure which an English court would disregard.
1 Citers


 
A'court v Cross [1835] 3 Bing 329
1835

Best CJ
Limitation
The Chief Justice commented on the 1623 Act, saying that he was "sorry to be obliged to admit that the courts of justice [had] been deservedly censured for their vacillating decisions" and: "When by distinctions and refinements, which, Lord Mansfield says, the common sense of mankind cannot keep face with, any branch of the law is brought into a state of uncertainty, the evil is only to be remedied by going back to the statute …"
Limitation Act 1623
1 Citers


 
Wright v Williams [1836] 1 M & W 77; [1836] 1 Gale 410; [1836] Tyr & Gr 375; [1836] 150 ER 353
1836


Land, Limitation
The plaintiff landowner had a copper mine. The water from the mine, which had been contaminated with metallic substances discharged over a neighbour's land. He sought to establish a right to do so by prescription. The right was claimed over land subject to a tenancy for life. Held: Such a claim was in the nature of a claim to a water course. The claim should be pleaded as 'for the full period of forty years next before the commencement of the suit' . It was no full answer to say that the servient land was subject to a tenancy for life, siince though the period of the tenancy for life was to be excluded, that exclusion was conditional upon the reversioner making objection within three years after the end of the tenancy for life.
Prescription Act 1832

 
Brooksbank v Smith [1836] EngR 447; (1836) Donn Eq 11; (1836) 47 ER 193 (B)
24 Feb 1836

Baron Alderson
Equity, Limitation
In this case, trustees under a will, who were solicitors, had by mistake transferred stock to a person not entitled. Baron Alderson said, this being under circumstances of mistake, it appeared clear to him that the Plaintiffs were entitled to equitable relief ; for, on looking into the authorities he found that fraud or mistake were each of them grounds for relief in equity. Then came the question, whether the Statute of Limitations was a bar? The Statute of Limitations did not apply to Courts of Equity so as to bind them, Undoubtedly, they had exercised discretion, and very rightly, upon the rules laid down. For instance, in cases of fraud, Courts of Equity did not apply the rule in the same manner as Courts of law, which were so bound by the words of the statute, that if the cause of action bad occurred more than six years before, however equitabIe it might be, they could not permit the statute to run. Courts of Equity held, that in cases of fraud, the statute of Limitations ran from the discovery of the fraud, It appearet to jim that cases of mistake fell under the same rule, and that it would be inequitable to apply the Statute of Limitations, except in cases where a party had lain by after the mistake had been discovered, more than six years ; in this case the mistake had been discovered within six years, the statute did not, therefore, bar the Plaintiff's claim.
1 Cites

1 Citers

[ Commonlii ]
 
Brooksbank And Another v Smith [1836] EngR 446; (1836) 2 Y & C Ex 59; (1836) 160 ER 311
24 Feb 1836

Alderson B
Equity, Limitation
The testatrix died in 1818 leaving a fund in trust, subject to a life interest, for her children in equal shares, with substitutional gifts if any child predeceased her leaving issue. Her daughter Elizabeth did predecease her by two months, but on the death of the life tenant in 1827 the trustees were given incorrect information about the date of Elizabeth's death and her share (£1,000 nominal of stock) was transferred to her widower instead of to her children. When the mistake was discovered in 1833 the trustees claimed £100 stock (which was all that remained unsold) from Elizabeth's widower. The bill was issued within six years of discovery of the mistake. Alderson B held that the claim was not statute-barred. He treated it as a proprietary claim based on a mistake of fact.
1 Cites

[ Commonlii ]
 
Norton v Ellam [1837] EngR 183; (1837) 2 M & W 461; (1837) 150 ER 839
1837

Baron Parke
Limitation
Baron Parke said: "It is quite clear that a promissory note, payable on demand, is a present debt, and is payable without any demand, and the statute begins to run from the date of it."
1 Citers

[ Commonlii ]

 
 Carr v Foster; 1842 - (1842) 3 QBR 581

 
 Edinburgh and Dalkeith Railway Company v Wauchope; HL 22-Mar-1842 - [1842] UKHL 710; 8 ER 279; (1842) 8 Cl & F 710; [1842] EngR 405; (1842) 8 Cl & Fin 710; (1842) 8 ER 279; [1842] UKHL J12
 
Hemp v Garland, Administrator and Co [1843] EngR 33; (1843) 4 QB 519; (1843) 114 ER 994; 12 LJQB 134; 3 Gal and Dav 402
1843

Lord Denman CJ
Limitation, Contract
The Defendant gave a warrant of attorney to secure a debt payable by instalments, the plaintiff to be at liberty, in case of any default, to have judgment and execution for the whole, as if all the periods for payment had expired. Held that, in an action of assumpsit on the implied promise to pay according to the terms of the defeazance, defendant might shew, urider a plea of the Statute of Limitations, that the first default was made more than six years before action ; and that this was a complete defence, not only as to instalments due more than six years ago, but also as to those due within that period.
The court found that "the cause of action accrued upon the first default for all that then remained owing of the whole debt."
Lord Denman CJ continued: (t)here was no other contract for forbearance or giving time than that which is expressed in or to be implied from the terms of the warrant of attorney."
1 Citers

[ Commonlii ]
 
Mc Donnell v Mc Kinty (1847) 10 ILR 514
1847

Blackburn CJ
Land, Limitation
Discontinuance of possession of land can occur where the paper title owner having abandoned possession, actual possession is taken by another person in whose favour or for whose protection the Limitation Act could operate.
1 Citers



 
 Duke of Brunswick v Harmer; QBD 2-Nov-1849 - (1849) 14 QB 185; [1849] EngR 915; (1849) 117 ER 75
 
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