Finnell v. Southern Kan. Ry. Co.

• Decision Date: 12 January 1888
• Citation: 33 F. 427
• Court: U.S. District Court — Western District of Missouri
• Parties: Finnell v. SOUTHERN KAN. RY. CO.

33 F. 427

Finnell v. SOUTHERN KAN. RY. CO.

United States Circuit Court, W.D. Missouri, Western Division.

January 12, 1888

Gates &amp Wallace, for plaintiff.

Gardiner Lathrop and Geo. W. McCrary, for defendant.

Plaintiff sued the defendant for personal injuries sustained in the state of Kansas, May 16, 1884, by falling off of the platform connected with one of the defendant's station-houses on the line of its road. At the time of the accident plaintiff was a citizen of Missouri, and returned to his home in Missouri immediately after the accident, where he continued to reside until the day of trial. Defendant is a Kansas corporation, and operates a line of road extending from Kansas City, Missouri, to Harper, Kansas. Under the laws of Kansas, an action for personal injuries is barred after the lapse of two years. Vide chapter 80, art. 3, Sec. 18, subd 3, Gen. St. Kan. 1868. Section 25 of the same article reads as follows: 'When the right of action is barred by the provisions of any statute it shall be unavailable either as a cause of action or ground of defense.'

This suit was brought in the circuit court of the United States for the Western division of the Western district of Missouri more than two years after plaintiff sustained the injury in question. On the trial defendant's counsel pleaded and offered in evidence the various sections of the Kansas statutes above stated, as a bar to the action.

THAYER J., (orally, after stating the facts.)

Referring to the objection made last evening to the introduction of the Kansas statute of limitations, I will say that in my judgment section 25, art. 3, c. 80, was intended to extinguish a cause of action after the lapse of the statutory period of limitation and not merely to bar the remedy. I can conceive of no other purpose to be subserved by the adoption of the section in question, unless it was to extinguish the cause of action as well as to bar the remedy. Judge Story, in his treatise on the Conflict of Laws, appears to have been the first text-writer who noted the distinction between statutes of limitation that bar the remedy and those that extinguish the cause of action. At page 487 the author says, in substance, that when a statute of limitations extinguishes the debt or cause of action after the lapse of a certain period, such a statute may be pleaded in a foreign jurisdiction as a bar to the cause of action or debt when there sued on, provided the parties continue to reside in the state where the law extinguishing the cause of action prevails-- during the full period of limitation, so that it has actually operated on the parties and on the case. The rule stated by Judge Story, as restricted by the proviso, was approved by TIDAL, C. J., as a reasonable rule, especially in view of the proviso, in the case of Huber v. Steiner, 2 Bing.N.C. 202. The same rule, with the limitation that both parties have resided in the state where the law prevails for the full statutory period, and have been operated upon by the statute, is also stated as the correct rule in Wood, Lim. 22.

So far as I can find, from the limited examination I have made there is no warrant in the authorities for the remark made...