WEEKS v. HARRIMAN, 65 N.H. 91 (1888)

18 A. 87

WEEKS v. HARRIMAN.

Supreme Court of New Hampshire Coos.
Decided December, 1888.

A judgment of a sister state, based upon the statute of limitations alone, is a bar to the maintenance of an action for the same cause here.

ASSUMPSIT. Plea, a former adjudication of the subject-matter of the action by the Vermont county court for the county of Essex. A referee found that in 1882 this defendant commenced an action of assumpsit in the Essex county court against this plaintiff; that this plaintiff filed therein, by way of set-off, two items which involved the same matter for which he seeks to recover here, and that at the September term, 1883, judgment was rendered for this defendant on the ground of the statute of limitations alone.

J. W. Remick and Aldrich Remich, for the plaintiff.

H. W. Lund (of Vermont), for the defendant.

ALLEN, J.

The Vermont judgment pleaded here in bar of the maintenance of the action was rendered by a court having jurisdiction of the parties and cause of action, and in the regular course of procedure upon a plea of the statute of limitations in bar of the plaintiff’s right of action. Such a judgment, conclusive against the plaintiff’s right of action in Vermont, where it was rendered, is conclusive everywhere when pleaded in a suit between the same parties and on the same cause of action. The fact that the judgment was rendered upon the plea of the statute of limitations alone does not make it any less conclusive in character. The plaintiff’s claim was merged in the judgment by which its further prosecution is barred. Sanderson v. Peabody, 58 N.H. 116, 119.

Judgment for the defendant.

SMITH, J., did not sit: the others concurred.

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