Hickok v. Hickok

Decided September 14, 1852

New York Supreme Court · decided 1852-09-14

The defendant was intrusted by the plaintiff with a note against a third person, to collect for the plaintiff. He received the money, in 1828, and on being called on for the money, in 1850, he denied having received it. This action being commenced in 1850, he relied on the statute of limitations as a bar. The plaintiff was nonsuited, at the trial, on that defense, and he appealed to this court.,

Relies on Stafford v. Richardson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1852-09-14

How this case has been cited

Cited by 5 later decisions — most recently August 1912

4 state decisions

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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By the Court, Shankland, J.

¶1The case of Lillie v. Hoyt, (5 Hill, 395,) establishes the doctrine that the duty of an agent, to receive money and pay it over, is broken if he does not pay it over in a reasonable time; and that an action will lie against him without a demand. The case of a foreign factor, and perhaps that of an attorney at law, are the only exceptions the case recognizes.

¶2The defendant was not an attorney at law, and is not within the reason of the rule which exempts them from an action, without a previous demand. The statute of limitations was a valid defense to this action. Although the defendant may have acted dishonestly, by denying the receipt of the money, yet that is a matter of conscience, with which the court has nothing to do.

¶3The defendant did not stand in the relation of a trustee, so as to deprive him of the benefit of the statute. (15 Wend. 302.)

¶4The judgment must be affirmed.