Brown v. Brown
| Decision Date | 23 December 1881 |
| Citation | 28 Minn. 501,11 N.W. 64 |
| Parties | BROWN v BROWN. |
| Court | Minnesota Supreme Court |
OPINION TEXT STARTS HERE
Appeal from judgment, county of Carver.
L. L. Baxter, for respondent.
Smith & Egan, for appellent.
The main question presented to us for decision in this case is whether, upon the facts stated in the complaint, the plaintiff's alleged cause of action is barred by the statute of limitations; and this depends upon the time of the maturity of a debt for a loan of money,-whether at the date of the loan or of a subsequent demand for its payment. The contract between the parties is alleged to be as follows: “The plaintiff loaned to the defendant, at his request, the sum of $300, upon the terms and conditions that the same should become due and payable from the defendant to the plaintiff, with interest, whenever the plaintiff should thereafter demand the same, and not before such time.”
The contract is alleged to have been made more than six years before the commencement of the action, and a demand within six years. The statute of limitations begins to run upon a promise when a suit can be brought and maintained upon it. The defendant invokes, as applicable to this contract, the rule which seems to be established by a weight of authority too great to be questioned, that a suit can be maintained on a promise for a just consideration to pay a sum of money on demand, or, when requested, immediately and without any previous demand. The reason usually assigned for this doctrine is that the commencement of the suit is a sufficient demand. It must be confessedthat the idea that the commencement of a suit to enforce a debt should of itself work its maturity is strange and anomalous. The law usually requires the breach of a contract to precede the bringing of an action to enforce it. If this were a new question, it might certainly be urged with much force of reason that the intent of the parties, in contracts of this form, was to make a demand in pais a condition precedent to the right to have the money paid, and we think the rule should not be extended to cases not falling clearly within it. Downes v. Phœnix Bank of Charlestown, 6 Hill, 297. There can be no doubt that it is perfectly competent for parties to make a demand for the payment of money parcel of the contract to pay it, if they make their intention to do so sufficiently apparent.
In Norton v. Ellam, 2 M. & W. 461,-a leading case to which reference is continually made for support for the...
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