Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/788

774 FEDERAL REPORTBB. �court to which complainants refer. My best judgment — and, per- haps, as much may be inferred from what I have already said upon the question of laches and lapse of time — is that the ten-year limitation bas no application to this caae, for the reason that suits are "provided for" in the previous section, prescribing a limitation of six years where relief is sought on the ground of fraud in a case therefor "solely cognizable by the court of chancery." The contrary view is maintained by counsel upon the authority mainly of Corning v. Stebbins, 1 Barb. Ch. 589; Lawrence v. Trustees, 2 Denio, 577; and Spoor v. Wells, 3 Barb. Ch. 199. The first of those cases was a suit by a receiver appointed upon a creditor's bill after the return of an execu- tion unsatisfied. The object of the suit was to reaoh the equitable interests and things in action of the defendant. The chancellor said : "And I know of no limitation of that right, short of the ten years which the statute has fixed, within which suits purely of equitable oog- nizance must be brought in this court." When (1846) that case was decided, the limitation prescribed by the statutes of New York and Wisconsin were, as to suits in equity, the same. It was true, in 1846, of the Wisconsin statutes, that there was no provision expressly lixing a period for the commencement of suits "purely of equitable cognizance," and therefore such cases were then held in the New York courts to be embraced by the ten-year limitation, which was the period prescribed for "all other cases not (1) herein provided for." But the ten-year limitation did not, after the Wisconsin Eevision of 1858, apply to suits "purely of equitable cognizance," because such suits, wherever relief is sought on the ground of fraud, were provided for in a previous section, subjecting them to the six-year limitation. The Wisconsin Eevision of 1849 provided that the limitation applicable in suits at law should govern in cases of which equity courts had con- current jurisdiction with the courts of law, and should not apply in suits of which a court of equity had "peculiar and exclusive jurisdic- tion ;" also that "bills for relief on the ground of fraud shall be filed within six years after the discoA^ery, by the aggrieved party, of the faets constituting such fraud, and not after that time." The Eevis- of 1 858, as it seems to me, either for the purpose of providing a uniform limitation in all actions "for relief on the ground of fraud," or to reduce the limitations in suits purely of equitable cognizance, expressly declares that the six-year limitation shall apply to actions for relief on the ground of fraud "in cases which were heretofore solely cognizable by the court of chancery" — the cause of action to be deemed as accru- ing upon the discovery of the fraud. In respect to such suits there is, ��� �