Thompson v. Peter, 25 U.S. (12 Wheat.) 565 (1827)

Thompson v. Peter and Johns, Administrators de bonis non of Peter, deceased.

An acknowledgment of the debt, by the personal representatives of the original debtor, deceased, will not take the case out of the statute of limitations.1

Error to the Circuit Court for the District of Columbia. This was an action of assumpsit, brought in September 1822, by the plaintiff against the defendants, for goods sold, &c., to their intestate.

At the trial in the court below, the plaintiff gave in evidence, that in the lifetime of the intestate, James Peter, who died in the year 1808, he admitted the payment at his request and for his use, by the plaintiff, of the $800 charged in the account produced ; that after the death of said Peter, and after his brother D. Peter had obtained letters of administration on his estate, an account, of which the one now in suit is a copy, was drawn off, passed the orphans’ court, and presented to said D. Peter, as said administrator, for payment; to which he answered, there were no funds in hand to pay the debts of the intestate. The said account, with the certificate of * , a^owance by the orphans’ *court thereon, and so presented as afore-

J said, was left in the hands of said D. Peter, after his death, which was in the year 1812 ; and after the defendants had qualified as administrators de bonis non, some time in the spring or summer of the year 1820, an application was made on behalf of the plaintiff to the defendant, G. Peter, for a settlement of the said account ; to which he answered, that he knew very little of the business of the estate, which was principally attended to oy the other defendant, Johns, but there were no funds in hand to pay the debts of the estate ; and in a subsequent conversation, the said G. Peter, in answer to another application for payment of the said account, said, that until a recovery could be had from one Magruder, to whom lands of the intestate had been sold, for the purchase-money of which a suit was pending, the administrators would have no funds to pay James Peter’s debts ; application for a settlement was then made in behalf of the plaintiff, to said Johns, to whom the other defendant had referred as the acting administrator, and the said Johns was requested to see if the said account, before delivered to said David Peter as aforesaid, was not among the files of his papers, and to return it, for the purpose of bringing suit on it ; to which the said Johns