Statement of Facts.

jurisdiction lasted for but a short time; that the Federal troops came to Alexandria, the county seat of Rapides Parish, about March 17, 1864, and remained in possession thereof until about May 15, when they departed; that before leaving they burned the town of Alexandria, including the court-house, after which there was a state of disorganization, there was no court, and there were no officers in the parish until after July 9, 1865; that Mrs. Winn, the executrix, had gone as a refugee to Texas, and no service could have been made on her from the time the court-house was burned until she returned to Rapides Parish, in December, 1865. This testimony was uncontradicted.

Upon this evidence the District Court decided that, conceding that the acknowledgement of Mrs. Winn as executrix was not indorsed on the nine notes until some day between the first and tenth of January, 1866, yet the prescription of the notes was suspended by the act of Congress above recited for a period sufficient to save them from the bar of Article 3540 of the Code of Louisiana, and thereupon rendered judgment that the claim of Mayfield was a valid and legal debt due from the succession of Winn, and was properly placed in the provisional account as an ordinary claim.

Mrs. Winn and DuBose carried this judgment to the Supreme Court of Louisiana for review. That court, assuming that the facts which the evidence introduced in the District Court tended to prove were established, reversed the judgment of the District Court on the ground that the act of Congress on which Mayfield relied to suspend prescription applied only to causes and proceedings in the courts of the United States, and not to causes and proceedings in the courts of the States, and that the claim of Mayfield was therefore prescribed when Mrs. Winn, the executrix, undertook to acknowledge it in January, 1866.

The present writ of error, sued out by Mayfield, brought the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana under review.

Mr. E. T. Merrick for plaintiff in error.

Mr. Gus. A Bredux for defendants in error.

Opinion of the Court.

MR. JUSTICE WOODS, after stating the facts in the foregoing language, delivered the opinion of the court.

It is well settled in Louisiana that when a claim against a succession has been formally acknowledged by the executor or administrator, no suit should be brought upon it, and no suit or other proceeding is necessary to prevent prescription as long as the property of the succession remains in the hands of the executor or administrator under administration. Renshaw v. Stafford, 30 La. Ann. 853; Maraist v. Guilbeau, 31 La. Ann. 713; Porter v. Hornsby, 32 La. Ann. 337; Cloutier v. Lemée, 33 La. Ann. 305; Johnson v. Waters, 111 U. S. 640. If, therefore, the acknowledgment of Mrs. Winn, executrix, made in January, 1866, were made before the notes were prescribed, prescription has been suspended ever since, for the succession of Winn is still under administration. The notes were all barred in November and December, 1865, by the prescription of five years established by Article 3540 of the Civil Code of Louisiana, unless prescription was suspended by the act of Congress above recited. The case, therefore, turned in the Supreme Court of Louisiana upon the question whether the act of Congress was applicable. That court decided that it was not, and denied to the appellant the right set up and claimed by him under that statute. If the decision of the Supreme Court of Louisiana was wrong upon this point, this court has jurisdiction to review and reverse its judgment. Rev. Stat. § 709.

The facts of the case, as shown by the record, bring it within the terms of the act of Congress. The parish of Rapides was within the Confederate lines during the entire period of the civil war, except for a few weeks, when it was occupied by the Federal troops. The authority of the United States was reestablished over the City of New Orleans on May 1, 1862. The payees of the notes were shown to have been domiciled in the city at that time, and as there is no evidence that they afterwards changed their domicil, the presumption is that it continued unchanged. Desmare v. United States, 93 U. S. 605. Mayfield is shown to have been a resident in New Orleans. It appears, therefore, that the executrix of the succession of Winn was within the Confederate lines, and the payees and

Opinion of the Court.

the endorsee of the notes within the Federal lines. Under these circumstances they could not lawfully institute proceedings against the succession of Winn, in the parish of Rapides, to enforce the payment of the notes, for intercourse across the military lines was forbidden by law. Moreover, while the prescription of five years was running, the courts of the parish, which alone had jurisdiction of the succession of Winn, were closed for more than a year, a period well described by Lord Coke: "So, when by invasion, insurrection, rebellion, or such like, the peaceable course of justice is disturbed and stopped, so as the courts of justice be, as it were, shut up et silent leges inter arma, then it is said to be time of war." Co. Lit. 249 b.

The case, therefore, falls within the letter of the act of Congress; and if that act applies to and governs cases in the courts of the States, the judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana

was erroneous.

The question thus raised was expressly decided by this court in the case of Stewart v. Kahn, 11 Wall. 493, where it was held that the act applied to cases in the courts of the States as well as of the United States, and that thus construed the act was constitutional. We are satisfied with the judgment of the court in that case, and are unwilling to question or re-examine it. The decision in Stewart v. Kahn was followed by the Supreme Court of Louisiana in Aby v. Brigham, 28 La. Ann. 840.

These cases are conclusive of the present controversy, and, adhering to the ruling made in them, we are of opinion that the notes held by Mayfield were not prescribed, and that The judgment of the Supreme Court of Louisiana should be reversed, and the cause remanded to that court, with direc tions to enter judgment that the claim of Mayfield, based on the nine notes of Walter O. Winn, is a legal and valid debt due from his succession, and that it was properly placed in the provisional account of the dative testamentary executor as an ordinary claim; and it is so ordered.

Statement of Facts

SMITH & Another v. WOOLFOLK.

APPEAL FROM THE CIRCUIT COURT OF THE UNITED STATES FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF ARKANSAS.

Submitted April 9, 1885.-Decided May 4, 1885.

In a suit in equity brought by creditors of a deceased person against his administrator, for the settlement of his estate, a decree was made ordering a sale of his estate and the distribution of the proceeds. This was done, and the receiver reported his doing to the court. The report was confirmed, and the receiver was ordered to retain a small balance remaining as his compensation: Held, that this was a final decree settling the rights of the parties and disposing of the whole cause of-action, and that one of the complainants could not reopen it for the purpose of obtaining relief in that suit against a co-complainant.

After a decree disposing of the issues and in accordance with the prayer of a bill it is not competent for one of the parties without service of new process, or appearance, to institute further proceedings on new issues and for new objects, although connected with the subject matter of the original litigation, by merely giving the new proceedings the title of the original

cause.

To bar a suit for the foreclosure of a mortgage in Arkansas, there must not only be an adverse possession for such length of time as would bar an action in ejectment, but an open and notorious denial of the mortgagee's title: otherwise the possession of the mortgagor is the possession of the mortgagee.

The bill in this case was filed by Jose,h S. Woolfolk to foreclose a mortgage executed to him by William H. Todd, the intestate of L. H. Springer, one of the appellants, upon the Belleview plantation situate in Chicot County, Arkansas.

The record disclosed the following facts; Junius W. Craig, a citizen of Arkansas and the owner of the Belleview plantation, had, on December 5, 1856, mortaged it to Mrs. Lucy D. Craig, the widow of his brother, to secure $41,666 owing by him to her. Some time after the date of the mortgage Mrs. Craig intermarried with Joseph H. Woolfolk, the appellee. Junius H. Craig died on September 17, 1858. On March 16, 1866, Joseph H. Woolfolk and Luey D., his wife, William H. Frazier, assignee of A. D. Kelly & Co., William H. Todd, and others, in behalf of themselves and all other creditors of the

Statement of Facts.

estate of Junius W. Craig, filed their bill in equity in the Circuit Court of Chicot County, Arkansas, against Emma J. Wright, executrix of the last will of Junius W. Craig, and others, for the settlement of his estate. The case is styled in the record "The Creditors of Junius W. Craig v. Emma J. Wright, Executrix, and others." The bill alleged that many debts had been proven against the estate, amounting in all to the sum of $236,289.34, among which was the debt above mentioned due to Mrs. Lucy D. Woolfolk, a debt due to Frazier, assignee of A. D. Kelly & Co., for $45,607.76, and a debt due to Todd for $47,181.60. The prayer of the bill was that the lands of the estate might be sold and the proceeds distributed among the creditors.

On August 30, 1867, the plaintiffs in the original bill, including William H. Todd and Joseph S. Woolfolk and Lucy D., his wife, filed a supplemental bill of revivor, in which, among other things, they averred the pendency of an intervention filed by Woolfolk and wife in the Chancery Court of Jefferson County, in the State of Kentucky, praying to have the debt due them satisfied out of the property of the estate of Craig in Kentucky. The supplemental bill prayed the same relief as the original bill. The lands of the estate were brought to sale in accordance with the prayer of the bill, and most of them, including the Belleview plantation, were purchased by Todd. Upon a report of the sale, the share of Mrs. Woolfolk in the proceeds was found by the court to be $9,831, and Todd having paid a small part of this sum, Woolfolk, for the residue, took the two notes of Todd, payable to himself, for $4,243.20 each, to secure which Todd executed to him a mortgage on the Belleview plantation. The court having distributed the proceeds of the sale of the lands, directed the receiver to collect the available assets of the estate and report to the next term of the court. By his reports subsequently made it appeared that the receiver had been able to collect only the sum of $157, which the court allowed him to retain as his compensation, so that nothing remained of the original cause in which Woolfolk and his wife were in any way concerned.

Afterwards, on April 12, 1869, during a vacation of the