Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 10.djvu/88

 T6 FEDERAL REPORTER. �Tbese statutes, for the protection of dead men's estates, may fall nnder the generic term of statutes of limitation, but they are also something more as rules of property, and their effect is not necessarily the same as the ordinary statute of that name. �I have aiready pointed out some distinctions. There are others. The state is bound by these, but is not by the ordinary statutes of lim- itation, and for the reason that they are rules of property as well as statutes of limitation. State v. Crutcher, 2 Swan, 514; Chestnutt v. McBride, 1 Heisk. 389, 394. This is not answered by the sugges- tion that the crediter may go into another state and collect his debt, which shows it is not extinguished. If the rules of property there be such that his claim is a trust on assets in that state, undoubtedly our la,ws do not operate to defeat him there, but here they do; and as to assets in Tennessee, he bas, when barred, no claim or trust for his debt, and he cannot acquire any by an act of the executer, which is a breach of trust as to those who now solely own the assets, namely : the lega- tees, and here, the plaintiff, as to this specifie legacy. There is nothing in Puckett v. James, 2 Humph. 564, to sustain a contrary view. In that case the debt was not barred, and the court says dis- tinctly if it had been the ruling would have been different. �ARE THESE STATUTES BINDING ON THE FEDERAL COURTS? �It has been earnestly argued that these statutes, "being statutes of limitation, are not bindingin suits in equity in this court." I do not understiind this formula to be anything more than an assertion of the familiar principle that courts of equity are not bound by statutes of limitation as such, and that they proceed, independently of these statutes, upon grounds of their own; sometimes enforcing them as bindiug because there is a concurrent remedy at law to which they apply, wherefore a court of equity recognizes them; and sometimes using them as analogies in the application of their own rules of decis- ion relating to stale demanda and lapse of time. If state statutes have prescribed for their equity courts a different rule of conduct, or state decisions have bound the state equity courts to enforce these statutes (as is sometimes said) as laws binding on courts of equity as well as courts of law, such statutes or decisions are not binding on us here. �To this I readily accede, and, when qualified by the statement that when a federal court of equity does enforce a statute of limitations, either concurrently with a court of law or by analogy, it enforces the ��� �