Barron v. Kennedy

Citations

• 17 Cal. 574

Syllabus

<p>Past payment has always been held sufficient to take the debt on which it is made out of the statute. Unless accompanied at the time with qualifying declarations or acts on the part of the party making the payment, it is deemed an unequivocal admission of a subsisting contract or liability, from which a jury is justified and bound to infer a new promise. And it matters not whether the payment be either upon the principal or interest of the debt.</p> <p>The thirty-first section of our Statute of Limitations does not alter this rule as to the effect of such payment; it only alters the mode of proof, and is directed, principally at least, against the admission of oral acknowledgments and promises.</p> <p>Fairbanks v. Dawson (9 Cal. 89J holds that this section of the statute covers an acknowledgment by payment, and requires it to be evidenced by a writing; and this case does not require any departure from the rule there laid down— the payment of interest being by checks, inclosed in letters, stating that the checks were for interest on the debt for certain months.</p>