A. The statutes of Limitation (it has been said) are statutes of repose; and of late years the desire has been general; both on the part of the legal profession and on the part of the public, to abridge the length of the time during which actions may be commenced, and there can be little (if any) doubt that the policy of the statutes of Limitation is good, and is one to be encouraged. They are such legislative enactments as prescribe the periods within which actions may be brought upon certain claims, or within which certain rights may be enforced.
The law of limitation is founded on public policy, its aim being to secure the quiet of the community, to suppress fraud and perjury, to quicken diligence and to prevent oppression. The statute is founded on the most salutary principle of general and public policy and incorporates a principle of greater benefit to the community. It has, with great propriety, been termed statute of repose, peace and justice.
Mr. Justice Story in his Conflict of Law observed as follows:
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ADVERTISEMENTS:
“Law thus limiting suits are founded in the noblest policy. They are statutes of repose; to quiet titles to suppress frauds and to supply deficiency of proofs arising from the ambiguity or obscurity of 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 (court) 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 accumulation of past times which are unexplained, and have now, from lapse of time, become in applicable.”
The Indian Limitation Act lays down definite rules of law giving to the people for whose benefit they have been framed a guarantee that after a lapse of certain period they may rest in peace and rely upon titles or other rights which they have acquired.
ADVERTISEMENTS:
Statutes of Limitation rest upon sound policy and tend to the Pease and welfare of the society.