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29 Mo. 129

Reyburn v. Casey

Supreme Court of Missouri

Decided October 15, 1859

Supreme Court of Missouri · decided 1859-10-15

I. The court erred in refusing the instruction asked. (6 How. 550; 1 Smith, 8; 1 Morr. 321; 15 Ohio, 130; 30 Maine, 118.) I. The receipt is no evidence of indebtedness. It is merely a receipt for money; there is no promise to pay, or admission of indebtedness. This is not an action or a written instrument for the payment of money.

Key passage — most relied on by later courts

““The broad and comprehensive language of the statute evidently embraces all kinds of written instruments, without regard to their mere form or phraseology, which imply a promise or agreement to pay money, and is not restricted to such as have the requisites of promissory notes, or to such instruments as contain an express promise or agreement upon their face to pay. It is sufficient if the words import a promise or agreement, or that this can be inferred from the terms employed.””

quoted by 2 later decisions, including Zuvers v. Robertson, Hercules Exploration, Inc. v. Halliburton Co.

Relies on Davis v. Packard

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1859-10-15

How this case has been cited

Cited by 20 later decisions — most recently September 1995

19 state decisions

50185918601870188018901900191019201930194019501960197019801990decided

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.

View the full empirical analysis of this case →

Ewing, Judge,

¶1delivered the opinion of the court.

¶2This was an action on the following instrument, “ Received of H. Doane for Samuel A.- Reyburn, one hundred and eighty dollars. Potosí, November 16,1850. [Signed] J. H. Casey.”

¶3The defendant "pleaded the statute of limitations, alleging that the action did not accrue within five years before the commencement of the suit. There was a judgment for the defendant; and motions for a new trial and in arrest of judgment being overruled, plaintiff brings the cause to this court by appeal. The court was asked to declare the law to be that the lapse of five years was no bar to an action on the instrument sued on, but that it might be brought at any time within ten years. This was refused, and the only question is whether the instrument is a writing for the payment of money under the statute.

¶4The second clause of the second section of the limitation act provides that an action upon any writing, whether sealed or unsealed, for the payment of money or property, can only be commenced within ten years after the cause of action shall have accrued. The broad and comprehensive language of the statute evidently embraces all kinds of written instruments, without regard to their mere form or phraseology, which imply a promise or agreement to pay money, and is not restricted to such as have the requisites of promissory notes or to such instruments as contain an express promise or agreement upon their face to pay. It is sufficient if the words import a promise or agreement, or that this can be inferred from the terms employed. Upon this principle it has been decided that a due bill was a good promissory note, for, although no promise is expressed, it is inferred from the acknowledgment of indebtedness. (Kimball v. Huntington, 10 Wend. 68.) The word “borrow” has been held sufficient to imply a promise to pay. In Hanon v. Dugan, 6 Dana, 341, it was held that an instrument in which the defendant acknowledged that he had “borrowed” a sum of money from the plaintiff was a note for the direct payment *131of money; that the word “ borrowed” imported in itself a promise to pay as strongly as the word “ due.” To the same effect is Cummings v. Freeman, 2 Humph. 144.

¶5We think that the defendant, in saying he had received the money for plaintiff, very clearly acknowledges an indebtedness to him; that the admission that he has plaintiff’s money is an acknowledgment that' it is due, or that he owes it, all which expressions have heen held' sufficient to imply a promise of payment.

¶6The other judges concurring, the judgment will be reversed and the cause remanded.

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