Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 6.djvu/660

648 This he has done under the sanction of the state court which appointed him, and the expense has been by order of that court paid out of the lunatic's estate. The lunatic herself is and has been for some 30 years an inmate of an insane asylum in this district, and service of process on her personally would have availed nothing. It would have been more regular to have applied to this court to appoint some one to answer and defend the suit for her, in accordance with the eighty-seventh equity rule; but, unquestionably in this case, the court would have appointed her present committee, and the very same answer would have been filed. If there was any reason to suspect that the committee who has defended her interest had not done his whole duty, or had any interest opposed to hers, the court would not be slow to require a separate answer to be filed on her behalf by some one specially appointed to defend her; but to do so in this case would be to do an utterly nugatory act in a case in which the point is now for the first time raised on final hearing, after taking testimony on both sides for two years at great expense.

It seems to us proper in this case that the answer filed by her committee should be treated and taken as the answer of the lunatic.

Second. It is urged that the complainants are barred of their relief by limitations, lapse of time, laches, and delay in filing their bill. What will constitute such a bar as to a claim purely equitable must depend upon the facts and circumstances of each case. 1 Story's Equity, 64a; Hanson v. Worthington, 12 Md, 441; Syester v. Brewer, 27 Md. 319; Etting v. Marx, 4. 673.

It is to be noticed that the complainants are aliens residing in Ireland; that one of them is a person deaf and dumb from her youth. So far as we can gather from the record it does not appear that any notice was published, pending the administration in the probate court, warning the next of kin of the intestate to appear as claimants of the estate. They first obtained knowledge of the death of the intestate in 1874. In 1876 they filed a bill in one of the courts of St. Louis to