R.B. POLICIES AT LLOYD’S V. BUTLER (1949) 2 ALL ER 226 (KBD) (STREATIFEILD, J.)

R.B. POLICIES AT LLOYD’S V. BUTLER (1949) 2 ALL ER 226 (KBD) (STREATIFEILD, J.)

 

FACTS

• The plaintiff brought an action claiming the return of a motor-car which had been wrongfully detained by the defendant. The motorcar was stolen from the plaintiff by some unknown person (s) on June 27, 1940. In January 1947, the car, bearing different registration number, was found in the possession of the defendant, having passed to him through a line of intermediate purchasers during the previous seven years.
• The defendant pleaded that the plaintiffs’ cause of action is barred under the Limitation Act, 1939, by S. 2 (1) of which no action shall be brought “after the expiration of six years from the date on which the cause of action accrued”.
• The plaintiffs were the owners of this car and the defendant was an innocent purchaser who acquired it for good consideration and in good faith many years after it was stolen.

 

ISSUE

• Whether the claim made by the plaintiff was time barred.

  

HELD

The plaintiff failed.

• A cause of action cannot accrue unless a person exists who can sue and another person exists who can be sued.
• Section 26 of the Limitation Act, 1939 does not say the cause of action shall accrue for the first time on the discovery of the fraud; but only that time “shall not begin to run” until that event. Section 26 is the only provision where a special exception of this nature is made. Prima facie if there is a cause of action time begins to run as from that moment, despite the fact that the plaintiff is ignorant of the identity of the thief.
• It would lead to appalling results if someone, having lost a watch and discovered it fifty or sixty years later in the possession of a wholly innocent person who had bought it many years previously, was able to bring action for its recovery merely because he did not know who the thief was fifty or sixty years before.
• Legislature by introducing the Limitation Act only meant to protect persons who had paid their debts, but from length of time had lost or destroyed the proof of payment. It is an act of peace. Long dormant claims have often more cruelty than of justice in them.
• A claim made seven or eight years after the loss of the car against a perfectly innocent holder who has given good consideration for it without any knowledge that it was stolen does not seem just. One object of this Act is to prevent injustices of that kind and to protect innocent people against demands which are made many years afterwards.

The proper construction of the words “the action accrued” involves the finding that the cause of action here accrued in 1940 when the car was stolen from the plaintiffs.