Alexander v. Thompson

• Citation: 195 F. 31
• Decision Date: 02 April 1912
• Docket Number: 2,181.
• Parties: ALEXANDER v. THOMPSON et al.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Sixth Circuit

195 F. 31

ALEXANDER v. THOMPSON et al.

No. 2,181.

United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.

April 2, 1912

Joseph Walsh (David A. Fitzgibbon and C. R. Black, on the brief) for plaintiff in error.

C. B Grant (Warren, Cady & Land and Frank Lodge, on the brief) for defendants in error.

Before WARRINGTON, KNAPPEN, and DENISON, Circuit Judges.

KNAPPEN Circuit Judge.

The plaintiff sued to recover damages for alleged false imprisonment; the charge being, in substance, that at the instigation of defendant Thompson (a physician residing at St. Clair, Mich.) plaintiff was on October 27, 1905 unlawfully taken into custody by defendant Moore (then sheriff of St. Clair county), through the latter's deputies, and on the following day taken to London, Ontario, and there delivered into the custody of the officers of the London Insane Asylum, where she was detained until December 25th following.

This action was begun November 22, 1907. At the conclusion of the evidence the court directed verdict for defendants, on the ground that the action was barred by the statute of limitations (C. L. Mich. 1897, Sec. 9729), which requires actions for false imprisonment to be begun within two years after the cause of action accrues. If this direction was right, the judgment must be affirmed.

One of the errors assigned raises the proposition (not, however, argued in the brief) that the case falls within section 9730 of the Michigan Compiled Laws, which provides a limit of three years for actions against sheriffs for misconduct or neglect of their deputies.

We think this point without merit. Trask v. Wadsworth, 78 Me. 336, 5 A. 182; Sibley v. Estabrook, 4 Gray (Mass.) 295.

Equally without force is the contention that the case is brought within section 9733 of the Michigan Statutes, which, in case the plaintiff in an action of false imprisonment is, when the right of action accrues, imprisoned 'in the state prison,' postpones the running of the statute until the removal of the disability. The London Insane Asylum was clearly not the 'state prison' contemplated by the statute.

Defendants insist that the record affirmatively and conclusively shows that plaintiff was never imprisoned by defendants, and that, in any event, the imprisonment ended on the morning of October 28th, after which, as defendants allege, plaintiff went voluntarily to London, although accompanied by the sheriff's deputy. But we think there was evidence tending to sustain the alleged imprisonment of the plaintiff on October 27th, and that it would have been open to the jury to find that plaintiff was in defendants' custody during the trip to London, and until she was taken in charge at that place by the asylum authorities.

The crucial question is whether plaintiff's imprisonment by the defendants in this case ceased when she was received into the London Asylum, or whether it continued until her discharge therefrom. In the former case the action would be barred. In the latter it would not be. It is properly conceded that the statutory limitation runs, not from the time imprisonment begins, but from the time it ends, and in our opinion, for the purposes of this case, the imprisonment must be deemed to have ended when the detention for which defendants were responsible ceased; or, otherwise stated, when, if ever, a lawful restraint by the asylum authorities became substituted for that previously exercised or claimed by defendants.

It is, of course, true that, an imprisonment originally unlawful having been shown, the burden is normally upon the defendants to show the running of the statute by proving the termination of the unlawful imprisonment. But it is not necessary that proof to this effect be introduced by defendants. It is sufficient if the fact is shown by plaintiff's evidence.

Plaintiff's counsel contend in their brief that:

'There was not a time from the date of (plaintiff's) arrest in St. Clair to the time of her liberation from the London Asylum that she was not under the charge, direction, and control of the defendants.'

There is nothing in the record to sustain this contention, as a proposition of fact. On the contrary, the record effectually negatives the existence of any charge, direction, or control in fact, on the part of defendants over the plaintiff, from the time she entered the asylum on October 28th. But, as defendants might be liable for an unlawful detention of plaintiff on the part of the asylum authorities,...