Willson v. Willis

⁴⁸ Stockbridge, J., delivered the opinion of the Court. This case brings up for review the correctness of an order-of the Circuit Court for Talbot County, in sustaining a demurrer to a bill of complaint, filed for an accounting of rents ■ and profits arising out of certain lands of the plaintiff’s deceased husband. The allegations of the hill are exceedingly meagre. They set out the conveyance of a tract of land to William G-.

G. Willson on .the 17th of August, 1854; the marriage of the-plaintiff and Dr. Willson nineteen years later in 1873; Dr. Willson’s death, twenty-one years after, in 1894, and that the-plaintiff has demanded for the purpose of obtaining her dower, an accounting from the defendants of rents and profits-received by them, and been refused. The plaintiff then claims $48,000, with interest, and prays for an accounting. There is no- statement in the bill of the time when a demand was made, hut the bill was filed in December, 1916,. and it would seem probable that the demand had not been made at a much earlier date. Apparently, therefore, the first-claim that the plaintiff made to he entitled to dower was twenty-two years after the death of her husband.

This long-lapse of tíme is unusual and called for an explanation. It can not he said from the allegations of the bill whether the-doctrine of laches may or may not be successfully invoked, either to the whole or some part of the claim now made. So-long a delay in asserting it entitled the defendants to an explanation showing that the plaintiff had not been derelict in asserting her rights, to an extent that might operate to estopher, at least to a portion of the claim made. That a woman may estop- herself from setting up a claim for dower by acts in pais is settled by a long line of authorities. 9 R. C. L. 607, and cases there