Interruption

is the effect of some act or circumstance which of the use of a thing is natural or civil. Natural interruption is an interruption in fact, which takes place whenever by some act we cease truly to possess what we formerly possessed.

Vide 4 Mason’s Rep. 404; 2 Y. & Jarv. 285.

Civil interruption is that which takes place by some judicial act, as the commencement of a suit to recover the thing in dispute, which gives notice to the possessor that the thing which he possesses does not belong to him. When the title has once been gained by prescription, it will not be lost by any interruption of it for ten or twenty years. 1 Inst. 113 b A simple acknowledgment of a debt by the debtor, is a sufficient interruption to prevent the statute from running. Indeed whenever an agreement express or iniplied takes place between the creditor and the debtor, between the possessor and the owner, which admits the indebtedness or the right to the thing in dispute, it is considered a civil conventional interruption which prevents the statute or the right of prescription from running.

Vide 3 Burge on the Confl. of Laws, 63.