Gallagher v. Silver Brook Coal Co.

Citations

• 61 Pa. Super. 1
• 1915 Pa. Super. LEXIS 258

Syllabus

<p>Statute of limitations — Corporations—Suspension of business— Acis of March 87,1718,1 Penna. Laws 76, and April 85,1850, P. L. 570 — Constitutional law.</p> <p>The seventh section of the Act of April 25, 1850, P. L. 570, which enacts that “the provisions of the act passed the 27th of March, 1713, entitled ‘An act for the limitations of actions’ shall not hereafter extend to any suit against any corporation or body politic which may have suspended business,” etc., is entirely overthrown by Section 21, of Article III, of the Constitution of 1874, which declares that “no act shall prescribe any limitation of the time within which suits may be brought against corporations for injuries to persons or property, or for other causes different from those fixed by general law regulating actions against natural persons, and such acts now existing are avoided;” and the Act of 1850 is not saved by the second section of the schedule of the Constitution which provides that “all laws enforced in this Commonwealth at the time of the adoption of this Constitution not inconsistent therewith, and all right, actions, prosecutions and contracts shall continue as if this Constitution had not been adopted.”</p> <p>Statute of limitations — When Hie bar of the statute begins to run — Contract.</p> <p>In an action by practical coal miners against a corporation, to recover for services rendered in cutting coal in the defendant’s mine, the court will say as a matter of law that the statute of limitations is a bar to the plaintiff’s claim, where the'evidence shows the plaintiff’s contract was to cut the coal for a price named and to load it for an additional price per car, that the work was done in the fall of 1901, when it was stopped on account of the flooded condition of the property, that the plaintiffs were thereafter prevented from loading because no cars were furnished by the defendant, that the defendant suspended all work in 1906, that suit was not brought until the fall of 1908, and