Buntyn v. National Mutual Building and Loan Association

• Decision Date: 08 May 1905
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court
• Parties: JESSE W. BUNTYN ET AL. v. NATIONAL MUTUAL BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIATION

38 So. 345

86 Miss. 454

JESSE W. BUNTYN ET AL. v. NATIONAL MUTUAL BUILDING AND LOAN ASSOCIATION

Supreme Court of Mississippi

May 8, 1905

April 1905

FROM the chancery court of Lauderdale county, HON. STONE DEAVOURS Chancellor.

Buntyn and others, the appellants, were complainants, and the building and loan association, the appellee, was defendant in the court below. From a decree in defendant's favor the complainants appealed to the supreme court.

Appellants filed their bill against appellee, in which they sought the cancellation of a mortgage on real estate given to secure a loan of $ 700 borrowed by them from appellee, on the ground that the contract was fraudulent and usurious, alleging that they had paid the sum of $ 367.30 in excess of the amount really due appellee, which they sought to recover. Defendant answered the bill, denying the material allegations thereof and pleaded the three-years' statute of limitations under Code 1892, § 2739. On these pleadings testimony was taken, and on final hearing the court found that the contract was usurious, and that complainants, had they sued in time, would have been entitled to recover the excess paid by them over the amount actually borrowed, without interest, but that the three-years' statute of limitations applied; and the final decree rendered, therefore, limited the amount of the recovery to such excess as was paid within three years from the filing of the bill--to wit, the sum of $ 145.18. From that decree complainants appeal. Appellants contend that the appellee, being a foreign corporation, was not entitled to the benefit of the statute of limitations. The evidence on that point showed that appellee was domiciled in the state of New York, but had a branch business in Meridian, Lauderdale county, Mississippi, in 1891, and continuously up to the time this bill was filed; had agents there, to whom applications for loans were made, and to whom all payments on the loans were made, and who solicited applications for shares of stock; and appellee was doing a general building and loan business at that place.

Affirmed.

F. V. Brahan, and Mayes & Longstreet, for appellants.

A. S. Bozeman, for appellee.

[The briefs of counsel in this case did not reach the reporter; hence a synopsis of them is not given.]

Argued orally by Edward Mayes, for appellant, and by A. S. Bozeman, for appellee.

OPINION

WHITFIELD, C. J.

Just as we held in former ...