Wagner v. Standard Seed Tester Co.
| Decision Date | 15 December 1922 |
| Docket Number | 34815 |
| Citation | 191 N.W. 314,194 Iowa 1330 |
| Parties | ISAAC WAGNER, Appellant, v. STANDARD SEED TESTER COMPANY et al., Appellees |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Winneshiek District Court.--W. J. SPRINGER, Judge.
APPEAL from judgment against plaintiff for costs entered on a ruling sustaining defendant's demurrer to the petition of plaintiff. Plaintiff appeals.
Affirmed.
E. W Cutting, for appellant.
C. N Houck and Willett & Nelson, for appellees.
DE GRAFF, J.
This is an action in equity by a stockholder in the defendant corporation to cancel his certificates of stock and for a money judgment for the amount of his investment therein. Plaintiff alleges fraud and misrepresentation in the sale of the stock to him, and by an amendment charges that the defendants concealed from him "the true facts as set out in his petition" and that the defendants subsequent to the time of the purchase of said stock "did not do anything to advise plaintiff as to the real facts as to any such things, or as to the fraud contained in the alleged statements, representations and acts as alleged, and thereby concealed all of the same from plaintiff."
Briefly stated, the petition alleges that the plaintiff on July 8 1915 purchased ten shares of preferred capital stock at par value of the defendant corporation, and at said time received ten shares of the common stock of said company; that the stock was issued to plaintiff on said date; that he paid therefor by executing his note for $ 1,000 which note was later fully paid; that the plaintiff thereafter held and retained said stock; that the defendant corporation and defendant Walter C. Adams president of said company misrepresented said stock at the time of its sale and that the said fraud and misrepresentations were contained in a prospectus and in oral statements made to the plaintiff by the defendant Adams prior to the purchase of said stock.
In view of the conclusion reached it is unnecessary to detail the alleged misrepresentations. A demurrer was interposed by the defendants predicated on the ground that the statute of limitations barred the action. The only question presented on this appeal involves the correctness of the ruling of the trial court on the demurrer.
Was plaintiff's action barred at the time of the commencement of this action? The law of this case has found frequent expression in the decisions of this court, and the disposition of this appeal rests on the application of that law to the material facts which must be considered as admitted by the filing of the demurrer.
If it may be said under the pleaded facts that Code Section 3448 is applicable, then the demurrer should have been overruled. In other words, if the fraud pleaded is within the purview of this section and therefore solely cognizable in a court of equity, then the statute of limitations which would otherwise find application does not bar the action.
Under early chancery jurisprudence and practice a certain class of rights with appropriate remedies were recognized that occupied a sort of legal no man's land in order to redress injuries outside the pale of judicial cognizance in law actions. In recognition of this form of relief our legislature enacted the following statute: "In actions for relief on the ground of fraud or mistake, * * * the cause of action shall not be deemed to have accrued until the fraud, mistake * * * complained of shall have been discovered by the party aggrieved." Code Section 3448.
The true test of the applicability of this statute to pleaded facts is whether a court of equity before the enactment of the...
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