Limitation law

Limitation law:

Mr. Justice M'Lean in giving the opinion of the Supreme Court of the United States in 1830, says:

"Of late years the Courts in England and in this country have considered statutes of limitations more favourably than formerly. They rest upon sound policy, and tend to the peace and welfare of society. The Courts do not now, unless compelled by the force of the former decisions, give a strained construction, to evade the effect of those statutes." 

Again, there is the authority of Story whose works are universally referred to with respect in English Courts. At Section 576 of his Conflict of Laws the following passage occurs: 

"In regard to statutes of limitation or prescription of suits and lapse of time, there is no doubt that they are questions strictly affecting the remedy, and not questions upon the merits. They go ad litis ordinationem, and not ad litis decisionem, in a just juridical sense. The object of them is to fix certain periods within which all suits shall be brought in the Courts of a State, whether they are brought by or against subjects or by or against foreigners. And there can be no just reason and no sound policy in allowing higher or more extensive privileges to foreigners than are allowed to subjects. 

Laws, thus limiting suits, are founded in the noblest policy. They are statutes of repose, to quiet titles, to suppress frauds, and to supply the deficiency of proofs arising from the ambiguity and obscurity or the antiquity of transactions. They proceed upon the presumption that claims are extinguished, or ought to be held extinguished whenever they are not litigated in the proper forum within the prescribed period. They take away all solid grounds of complaint, because they rest on the negligence or neglect of the party himself. They quicken diligence by making it in some measure equivalent to right. They discourage litigation by bringing in one common receptacle all the accumulations of past times which are unexplained, and have now, from lapse of time, become inapplicable. 

It has been said by John Voet with singular felicity that controversies are limited to a fixed period of time, lest they should be immortal while men are mortal: Ne autem lites immortales essent, dum litigantes mortales sunt."