Walsh v. Mayer

Syllabus

<p>Conflict of Law — Statute of Limitations — Usury.</p> <p>A negotiable promissory note made in New Orleans secured by mortgage of real estate in Mississippi, the maker being a citizen of Arkansas, and the promisee being a citizen of Louisiana, and no place of payment being named in the note, is subject to the limitation of actions prescribed by the statute of Mississippi, as the law of the forum, when suit is brought upon it in Mississippi.</p> <p>In Mississippi a letter from the holder of a promissory note, the right of action on which is barred by the statute of limitations, asking for insurance on buildings on property mortgaged to secure payment of the note, and saying, “ The amount you owe me on the $7,500 note is too large to be left in such an unprotected situation : I cannot consent to it” — and a written reply from the maker, saying, “We think you will run no risk in that time, as the property .would be worth more than the amount due you if the building were to burn down,” is an acknowledgment of the debt within the requirements of the Mississippi statute of limitations.</p> <p>When a promissory note barred by the statute of limitations is signed in their individual names by several persons forming a copartnership, and the acknowledgment in writing to take it out of the operation of the statute is signed in the partnership ru> me, it is a sufficient acknowledgment if the note was an obligation contracted for partnership purposes, and if it can be legitimately inferred from the facts that the firm was the agent of all the makers for the purpose of the acknowledgment'.</p> <p>A statute prescribing a legal rate of interest, and forbidding the taking of a higher rate “under pain of forfeiture of the entire interest so contracted,” and that “if any person hereafter shall pay on any contract a higher rate of interest than the above, as discount or otherwise, the same may be sued for' and recovered within twelve months from the time of such payment,” confers no