Pennell v. Phillips

Citations

• 53 Pa. Super. 324
• 1913 Pa. Super. LEXIS 175

Syllabus

<p>Statute of limitations — Promissory notes — Barring the statute — Evidence — Witness—Competency of witness — Party dead.</p> <p>1. In an action against a decedent’s estate on a promissory note more than six years old, it appeared that there was an indorsement on the note of the payment of one year’s interest in plaintiff’s handwriting within six years before suit was brought. The plaintiff produced a witness who had never seen nor heard of the note in suit, but testified that he was present at a meeting between the maker and plaintiff, and that the maker inquired of the plaintiff if he had been credited with the interest he had paid, and that the plaintiff then produced and exhibited to the maker a paper of the shape and size of the note in suit. It contained writing on both sides, but the witness was wholly ignorant of the tenor of the writing, and all he could say was that judging from the shape and size of the paper, it was the note in suit. Held, that such evidence standing alone was plainly insufficient to bar the running of the statute.</p> <p>2. In such a case the plaintiff’s wife is a competent witness to testify that she saw the note shortly after decedent’s death, and that it then had the indorsement on it just as it appeared at the trial.</p> <p>3. An interested person is competent to testify to a fact or condition of facts existing after the death of a deceased party in interest, notwithstanding such testimony may inferentially tend to show that the same state of facts existed, or that some other connected facts existed or occurred prior to decedent’s death.</p> <p>4. In an action on a promissory note alleged to have been barred by the'statute of limitations, where the plaintiff offers certain evidence which the trial judge improperly admits, and rejects certain evidence which should have been admitted, but after a verdict for plaintiff, judgment for defendant n. o. v. is entered, the appellate court in reversing the case, will not enter judgment for