Little Rock, M. R. & T. Ry. Co. v. Manees

• Decision Date: 18 June 1887
• Citation: 4 S.W. 778
• Parties: LITTLE ROCK, M. R. & T. RY. CO. <I>v.</I> MANEES.
• Court: Arkansas Supreme Court

4 S.W. 778

LITTLE ROCK, M. R. & T. RY. CO.v.

MANEES.

Supreme Court of Arkansas.

June 18, 1887.

Appeal from circuit court, Drew county.

G. W. Shinn, for appellant. W. F. Slemmons, for appellee.

COCKRILL, C. J.

There was a previous suit between the parties to this record about the same subject-matter. It was instituted before a justice of the peace, to recover for damages done to the appellee's horse by one of the appellant's locomotives. The appellee had a verdict and judgment, on appeal to the circuit court, for $125, the amount claimed in the action. On appeal to this court, the judgment was vacated, and the action dismissed, upon the ground that the justice could not entertain jurisdiction for an injury to personal property where the amount in controversy was more than $100. See Little Rock, M. R. & T. Ry. v. Manees, 44 Ark. 100. Within a year after the judgment was vacated, but more than a year after the injury complained of was inflicted, the appellee brought this action in the circuit court for the same cause. The railroad company pleaded, and relied solely upon, the statute of one year as a bar to the action. Mansf. Dig. § 5540. After an agreement by the parties as to the facts, the cause was submitted to the court, without a jury. Judgment was rendered for the plaintiff; the court declaring, as a matter of law, "that the nonsuit in the supreme court saved the plaintiff from the limitation."

Section 4497, Mansf. Dig., provides that, "if any action shall be commenced within the times respectively prescribed in this act, and the plaintiff therein suffer a nonsuit, or, after a verdict for him, the judgment be arrested, or, after judgment for him, the same be reversed on appeal or writ of error, such plaintiff may commence a new action, from time to time, within one year after such nonsuit suffered, or judgment arrested or reversed. * * *" This provision comes from the old Revised Statutes, and it is in terms applicable only to actions limited "as prescribed in this act;" yet, as the chapter of which it was originally a part contained the entire body of the statute law upon the subject of limitations at the time of the revision, it was intended, and has always been treated, as a general provision regulating the practice in all cases not excepted from its operation. See Walker v. Peay, 22 Ark. 111. The limitation upon actions for injury to goods or chattels, as regulated by that chapter, was three years, (Mansf. Dig. § 4478, par. 31;) but as far as this particular class of actions is concerned it was changed to one year by the act of February 3, 1875, (Mansf. Dig. § 5540.) This alteration of the law does not take it out of the operation of the provision above quoted. The question is, does the plaintiff bring himself within the letter or the spirit of the statute when he shows that his judgment was vacated in this court, and his action dismissed, because the trial court had not jurisdiction of the subject-matter in the first proceeding instituted to collect his demand?

The case of Mason v. Howell, 14 Ark. 199, seems to answer the question in the negative. There the replication to the statute of limitations, which the plaintiff, according to the old practice, filed to the answer, alleged that the judgment in the first proceeding was decided by this court to be null and void; and it was held that a demurrer to it was properly sustained, because it is said a void judgment is no judgment, and therefore there was nothing to arrest or reverse. The case is briefly reported, and it does not set forth the reason why the judgment relied upon by the plaintiff to bring him within the saving clause of the statute was void. But, whatever the reason may have been, to apply the ruling in that case to the facts of this one would violate the spirit of the other decisions of this court construing the statute. A liberal, and not a close or technical, meaning, has been given to its terms in the other cases. The words "suffer a nonsuit" have not been construed to mean a nonsuit as understood at common law merely, as the term has sometimes been construed in similar statutes, (Holmes v. Chicago & A....