Friederichsen v. Renard

• Decision Date: 20 May 1918
• Docket Number: No. 270,270
• Citation: 38 S.Ct. 450,247 U.S. 207,62 L.Ed. 1075
• Parties: FRIEDERICHSEN v. RENARD et al
• Court: U.S. Supreme Court

247 U.S. 207

38 S.Ct. 450

62 L.Ed. 1075

FRIEDERICHSEN

v RENARD et al.

No. 270.

Argued April 25 and 26, 1918.

Decided May 20, 1918.

Mr. William V. Allen, of Madison, Neb., and Mr. W. C. Bibb, of Louisa, Va., for petitioner.

Mr. R. E. Evans, of Dakota City, Neb., and Mr. William D. Funk, of Bloomfield, Neb., for respondents.

Mr. Justice CLARKE delivered the opinion of the Court.

On March 12, 1908, the petitioner, Friederichsen, contracted in writing to exchange land which he owned in Nebraska for land in Virginia owned by the respondent, Mary C. Gilmore, who in the transaction acted through her agent, Edward Renard, the decedent of the respondent G. H. Renard. We shall refer to the parties as they were in the courts below, Friederichsen as plaintiff, and Gilmore and Renard as defendants.

On September 22, 1908, Friederichsen filed a bill in equity in the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, praying for a decree canceling the contract and the deed made pursuant thereto and for damages sustained, on the ground of fraud practiced upon him.

Defendants answered denying the fraud charged, and on August 20, 1912, a master, theretofore appointed in the case, reported that Friederichsen at the time of the exchange 'was below the average in mental ability'; that he had been induced to enter into the contract by the fraudulent representations of Renard, as alleged; and that he had sustained damage in the sum of $5,880. But the master also reported that Friederichsen, after taking possession of the Virginia lands, after filing his bill in the case, and after having had time to discover the condition and value of the land, had cut down a considerable amount of timber growing thereon.

On the coming in of this report, the court on September 19, 1913, found that the plaintiff was not entitled to equitable relief because he had ratified the contract of exchange by cutting timber on the Virginia lands, thereby preventing the defendants from being placed in statu quo, but that his remedy was at law for damages, and thereupon it was ordered: that the master's report be vacated; that pursuant to equity rule 22 (33 Sup. Ct. xxiv) the cause be transferred to the law side of the court; and 'that the parties file amended pleadings to conform with an action at law.'

Complying with this order, on September 25, 1913, the plaintiff filed an 'amended petition' on the law side of the court, and, upon the same facts stated in the original bill in equity, prayed for a judgment for damages. The defendants filed answers the same in substance as those filed in the equity suit, but adding the defense that the cause of action stated in the amended petition was barred by the Nebraska four-year statute of limitations.

When the case came on for trial, and after it was stipulated by counsel for the defendants that the plaintiff had introduced sufficient evidence to entitle him to recover a verdict, unless barred by the statute of limitations, it was ruled 'that the cause of action stated in the plaintiff's amended petition was barred by the statute of limitations of the state of Nebraska and that the filing of the amended petition did not relate back to the commencement of the action in such a way as to prevent the bar of the statute,' and a verdict was directed for the defendants. The judgment entered on this verdict affirmed by the Circuit Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, is now before us for review on writ of certiorari.

Thus the case presents for decision the single question, whether the filing of the 'amended petition' on the law side of the court on September 25, 1913, was the commencement of a new action more than four years after the fraud was discovered (which must have been prior to the filing of the bill in equity on September 22, 1908), which was therefore barred, or whether the proceeding at law was but pursuing toward a conclusion, in another form, the same cause of action stated in the original bill, so that the suspension of the statute of limitations continued, which began with the date of the service of the subpoena in chancery.

It is argued by the respondents that in the bill in equity the petitioner disaffirmed, while in the amended petition he affirmed, the contract of exchange; that the latter, for this reason, states a new and different cause of action from the former, and that, against this new cause of action, the running of the statute of limitations was not arrested until the amended petition was filed, and that then it had become barred.

But the allegations of fraud in the two papers are the same in substance, and practically the same in form, the only substantial difference between them being that the prayer for relief in the bill is for mutual return of lands, with incidental damages, while in the amended petition, it is for damages alone. The cause of action is the wrong done, not the measure of compensation for it, or the character of the relief sought, and, considered as a matter of substance, the change in the statement of that wrong in the amended petition cannot in any just sense be considered a new or different cause of action.

It is settled upon reason and authority that the conversion of a suit in equity into an action at law or vice versa is not alone sufficient to constitute the beginning of a new action and that with respect to the statute of limitations it is a mere incident in the progress of the original case.

It was so held by the Supreme Court of Nebraska long prior to the origin of the controversy we have here, when an action in ejectment was converted into a suit to redeem (McKeighan v. Hopkins, 19 Neb. 33, 26 N. W. 614), and again, in Butler v. Smith, 84 Neb. 78, 120 N. W. 1106, 28 L. R. A. (N. S.) 436, in a similar case in 1909, the question was held not to be an open one.

In Smith v. Butler, 176 Mass. 38, 57 N. E. 322, followed with approval in 1917 i...