Appeal of Keyser

Citations

• 124 Pa. 80
• 16 A. 577
• 1889 Pa. LEXIS 1007

Syllabus

<p>(a) In the distribution, in 1887, of the estate of a decedent dying in 1883, a claim was made for the payment upon a quantum meruit for personal services alleged to have been rendered under an employment begun in 1878, and continuing thereafter until the decedent’s death.</p> <p>(b) On the hearing, it was shown that in 1879 a different and special contract was set up by the claimant to the deceased, which the latter at once repudiated, and that in 1884 demand had been made of the executors for payment of the claim as afterwards presented.</p> <p>1. The Orphans’ Court having found that the relation between the parties, in the performance of the services claimed for, was not that of employ el- and employee, the finding of that court upon the question of fact must be accepted whei-e error is not clearly made to appear.</p> <p>2. The statute of limitations commenced to run not later than 1879, was not stopped by the death of the decedent in 1883, nor by the presentation of the demand to the executors in 1884, and the claim when made upon the adjudication in 1887 was therefore barred.</p> <p>3. The statute of limitations may be set up in.the Orphans’ Court, precisely as in a court of law; nor can it be tolled by anything short of a suit at law, or what is its equivalent, in the Orphans’ Court, and a demand upon an executor or administrator is not such an equivalent: Yorks’ App., 110 Pa. 77, explained and re-affirmed.</p>