CAMPBELL V. HOLT

• Decision Date: 07 December 1885
• Citation: 115 U. S. 620
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

Campbell v. Holt

Submitted April l7, 1885

Decided December 7, 1885

115 U.S. 620

N ERROR TO THE SUPREME COURT

OF THE STATE OF TEXAS

Syllabus

The repeal of a statute of limitation of actions on personal debts does not, as applied to a debtor the right of action against whom is already barred, deprive him of his property in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution of the United States.

The facts which make the case are stated in the opinion of the Court.

MR. JUSTICE MILLER delivered the opinion of the Court.

This is a writ of error to the Supreme Court of the State of Texas.

The action was brought in the District Court of Washington county, Texas, May 16, 1874, by Holt, the defendant in error, against the present plaintiffs in error. Holt sued as devisee and legatee of his wife, Malvina, who was the daughter of John Stamps, deceased, of whose estate Moina and J. B. Campbell are administrators. The action was founded in the allegation that Malvina Stamps, afterwards Holt, inherited from her mother, Henrietta Stamps, the wife of John Stamps, an interest in lands and negroes which her mother owned at the time of her death; that the land was sold by her father, John Stamps, who received the money and converted it to his own use, and that he also received the hire and profits of the negroes so long as they remained slaves under the laws of Texas.

The defendants set up several defenses, among others the statute of limitations of the State of Texas, but, on a trial by

Page 115 U. S. 621

jury, Holt recovered a judgment for ,692.93. From this judgment an appeal was taken to the supreme court of the state, and referred, by consent of parties, to the Commissioners of Appeal, by whom it was confirmed, and this affirmance was made the judgment of the supreme court.

There were several assignments of error in the hearing before the Commissioners of Appeal, but the only one which we can consider is that growing out of the plea of the statute of limitations.

The cause of action in this case accrued before the outbreak of the war, the mother having died in 1857, and Malvina Stamps was a minor during all the time preceding the insurrection. It seems that the Legislature of Texas had passed several acts suspending the operation of the statutes of limitations during the war. But in 1866, a law was passed which enacted that these statutes, which had been suspended during this time, should again commence running on the second day of September of that year. At this time, Malvina Stamps was of age and unmarried, and the statute then began to run against her in this case, and would become a bar in two years. This time elapsed without any suit brought on the claim. It was therefore, as the Commissioners of Appeal admit, then barred by the statute. But in 1869, the State of Texas, which had not yet been reinstated and accepted by the two houses of Congress as in her old relations, made a new constitution, which, it was declared in the ordinance submitting it to the vote of the people, should take effect when it was accepted by Congress, which was afterwards done.

Article 12, § 43, of this constitution is in these words:

"The statutes of limitations of civil suits were suspended by the so-called Act of Secession of the 28th of January, 1861, and shall be considered as suspended within this state until the acceptance of this constitution by the United States Congress."

The District Court of Washington County, and the Commissioners of Appeal, following many previous decisions of the supreme court of the state, held that this provision removed the bar of the statute of limitations, though before its taking

Page 115 U. S. 622

effect, the time had elapsed necessary to make the bar complete in this case.

The defendants, both by plea and by prayers for instruction to the jury and in argument before the Commissioners of Appeal, insisted that the bar of the statute, being complete and perfect, could not, as a defense, be taken away by this constitutional provision, and that to do so would violate that part of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States which declares that no state shall "deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law."

This writ of error to the state court is founded on that proposition, and we must inquire into its soundness.

The action is based on contract. It is for hire of the negroes used by the father, and for the money received for the land of his daughter, sold by him. The allegation is of indebtedness on this account, and the plea is that the action is barred by the statute of limitations. It is not a suit to recover possession of real or personal property, but to recover for the violation of an implied contract to pay money. The distinction is clear, and, in the view we take of the case, important.

By the long and undisturbed possession of tangible property, real or personal, one may acquire a title to it or ownership, superior in law to that of another who may be able to prove an antecedent and at one time paramount title. This superior or antecedent title has been lost by the laches of the person holding it in failing within a reasonable time to assert it effectively, as by resuming the possession to which he was entitled or asserting his right by suit in the proper court. What the primary owner has lost by his laches the other party has gained by continued possession without question of his right. This is the foundation of the doctrine of prescription, a doctrine which, in the English law, is mainly applied to incorporeal hereditaments, but which, in the Roman law, and the codes founded on it, is applied to property of all kinds.

Mr. Angell, in his work of Limitations of Actions, says that the word "limitation" is used in reference to

"the time which is prescribed by the authority of the law during which a title may be acquired to property by

Page 115 U. S. 623

virtue of a simple adverse possession and enjoyment, or the time at the end of which no action at law or suit in equity can be maintained,"

and in the Roman law it is called praescriptio.

"Prescription, therefore," he says,

"is of two kinds -- that is, it is either an instrument for the acquisition of property or an instrument of an exemption only from the servitude of judicial process."

Angell on Limitations §§ 1, 2.

Possession has always been a means of acquiring title to property. It was the earliest mode recognized by mankind of the appropriation of anything tangible by one person to his own use, to the exclusion of others, and legislators and publicists have always acknowledged its efficacy in confirming or creating title.

The English and American statutes of limitation have in many cases the same effect, and if there is any conflict of decisions on the subject, the weight of authority is in favor of the proposition that where one has had the peaceable, undisturbed, open possession of real or personal property, with an assertion of his ownership, for the period which, under the law, would bar an action for its recovery by the real owner, the former has acquired a good title -- a title superior to that of the latter, whose neglect to avail himself of his legal rights has lost him his title. This doctrine has been repeatedly asserted in this Court. Leffingwell v. Warren, 2 Black 599; Croxall v. Shererd, 5 Wall. 289; Dickerson v. Colgrove, 100 U. S. 583; Bicknell v. Comstock, 113 U. S. 152. It is the doctrine of the English courts, and has been often asserted in the highest courts of the states of the union.

It may therefore very well be held that in an action to recover real or personal property where the question is as to the removal of the bar of the statute of limitations by a legislative act passed after the bar has become perfect, that such act deprives the party of his property without due process of law. The reason is that, by the law in existence before the repealing act, the property had become the defendant's. Both the legal title and the real ownership had become vested in him, and to give the act the effect of transferring this title to plaintiff would be to deprive him of his property without due process of law.

Page 115 U. S. 624

But we are of opinion that to remove the bar which the statute of limitations enables a debtor to interpose to prevent the payment of his debt stands on very different ground.

A case aptly illustrating this difference in the effect of the statute of limitations is found in Smart v. Baugh, 3 J. J. Marsh. 364, in which the opinion was delivered by Chief Justice Robertson, whose reputation as a jurist entitles his views to the highest consideration. The action was detinue for a slave, and the defendant having proved his undisturbed possession of the slave for a period of time which would bar the action, but having failed to plead the statute of limitations, the question was whether he could avail himself of the lapse of time. "The plea," said the court,

"is non detinet in the present tense, and under this plea, anything which will show a better right in the defendant than in the plaintiff may be admitted as competent evidence. The plea puts in issue the plaintiff's right. Five years' uninterrupted adverse possession of a slave not only bars the remedy of the claimant out of possession, but vests the absolute legal right in the possessor. Therefore proof of such possession may show that the claimant has no right to the slave, and cannot recover. Consequently it would seem to result from the reason of the case that the adverse possession may be proved under the general issue."

Answering the objection that in assumpsit and other actions the statute, to be available, must be pleaded, and by analogy should be pleaded in that case, he says:

"The same reason does not apply to assumpsit, because the statute of limitations does not destroy the right in foro conscientia to the benefit of assumpsit, but only bars the remedy if the defendant chooses to rely on the...