Herron v. Herron
Herron v. Herron
Opinion of the Court
Opinion by
The administrator of a deceased member of a firm brought suit against the survivor for an accounting. It appears that James Herron and M. F. Herron were copartners, trading as M. F. Herron & Co.; that the partnership was dissolved in 1895 by the death of James Herron; that M. F. Herron, after his release from an insane asylum in 1895, received from his committee $1,895.82 as the assets of the firm; that James Herron was, when he died, indebted to the firm in the sum of $8,099.59. In July, 1897, M. F. Herron was compelled to pay a part
The forty-nine assignments of error raise but two questions, (a) Was the court in error in holding that the items claimed as credits by the defendant were barred by the statute of limitations, and (b) that it did not apply to the two judgments collected by the defendant?
There are two classes of claims: (1) A balance due on the partnership books which was struck in 1895, and (2) contribution for a debt of the partnership paid by the defendant in 1897. Either of these, if allowed, would eliminate any claim of the plaintiff to any part of the fund raised by the collection of the two judgments.
The first claim is for what is known as an account stated. In Leinbach v. Wolle, 211 Pa. 629, such an account is defined to be “an account in writing, examined and accepted by both parties. And this acceptánce need not be express, but may be implied from the circumstances.” The long acquiescence in the account on the books as of 1895 would raise the presumption of acceptance which would be conclusive. The cases where accounts rendered have not become accounts stated were where there has been no real or presumed acceptance of their correctness: Lowenstein v. Bache, 41 Pa. Superior Ct. 552, 556, and Tully v. Felton, 177 Pa. 344, 357. The
Defendant having collected the two judgments within six years, the plaintiff had the right to recover his share. The collection of the judgments was in the nature of an insulated or cut off transaction such as occurred in Brown v. Agnew, 6 W. & S. 235, where the right to an accounting was allowed to be enforced despite the fact that the statute of limitation had run since the dissolution of the partnership.
The assignments of error are overruled and the decree affirmed.
Reference
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- Syllabus
- Partnership—Account stated—Statute of limitations. Where a partner dies and thereupon the partnership books are balanced showing a balance due from the deceased partner, the statute of limitations begins to run against such indebtedness from the date when the hooks were balanced; and the surviving partner after the expiration of six years from such date cannot set up such indebtedness as a set-off in a suit brought against him for an accounting of other partnership assets which he had recovered after the date when the books were balanced; nor in such a case can the surviving partner claim subrogation because he had used some of his own funds to pay partnership debts after the balancing of the hooks, if it appears that more than six years had elapsed from the date of such payment to the date of the institution of the suit. If the assets for which such suit was brought were collected by the surviving partner within six years from the date of the beginning of the suit, he must account for a proper share of them to the representative of the deceased partner.