Rhone v. Keystone Coal Co.

Citations

• 250 Pa. 336
• 95 A. 530
• 1915 Pa. LEXIS 946

Syllabus

<p>Contracts — Bonds—Time of payment — Presumption—Set-off— Statute of limitations.</p> <p>1. Where no time is specified in a note or other obligation, for the payment of money, the parties are presumed to have intended that the money should be payable immediately.</p> <p>2. A debt, which on its face appears to have been barred by the statute of limitations, cannot be used as a set-off, without evidence to take it out of the statute.</p> <p>3. In an action of scire facias sur mortgage where it appeared that the bond and mortgage were payable, not at any fixed date, but at such time as the board of directors of the mortgagor should determine, and the action was instituted eighteen years after the date of the bond and mortgage, the trial judge did not err in charging that after such a lapse of time the presumption was that the bond was due and payable and that the burden was upon the defendant to show that it was not payable; and in giving binding instructions for the plaintiff when defendant did nothing to meet that burden.</p> <p>■ 4. ■ In such case, it was not error for the court to exclude evidence tending to show a set-off, based upon the alleged liability of one of the assignees of the mortgage to the mortgagor, where it appeared that such alleged liability, if it existed, was barred by the statute of limitations.</p>