Dalzell v. Lewis

Citations

• 252 Pa. 283
• 97 A. 407
• 1916 Pa. LEXIS 607

Syllabus

<p>Equity — Fraud—Laches—Statute of limitations — Bill for accounting and discovery.</p> <p>1. While a court of equity is not bound by the statute of limitations it will frequently adopt and apply ,the statute to corresponding rights and remedies as in a court at law, and will refuse relief to parties who have slept upon their rights or have been negligent in asserting them. This is especially true when the parties to a transaction are dead or cannot be found and documentary evidence has been lost or destroyed.</p> <p>2. A cause of action arising from fraud is complete when the transaction has ended and the statute of limitations begins to run at once, unless discovery is prevented by active concealment.</p> <p>3. A bill in equity for a discovery and an accounting alleged that plaintiff had entered into an agreement in 1904 with the defendants for the joint purchase of coal lands; that thereunder plaintiff was to pay one-half of the purchase-money and the defend-. ants the other half; that the lands were purchased, but that the consideration actually paid was less than one-half the amount represented to the plaintiff by the defendants, and that plaintiff did not know of such fraud until 1914, and then commenced the present proceeding. It appeared that the deeds were on record and the same sources of information were open to the plaintiff in 1904 as in 1914, and that defendants had made no active attempt during the intervening period to conceal the fraud. Held, the court did not err in dismissing the hill.</p>