Also known as: efflux of time · lapse of time · expiration of term
Written by attorneys — see sources below.
An expiration of a legal period, power, or obligation that occurs solely because a specified duration has passed without any intervening act or event.
Prime Wireless sent West Broadband a written proposal for fiber service on January 15 with no stated deadline. West Broadband signed and returned the document on May 15 after completing an office move. The four-month gap caused the power of acceptance to end, so no contract formed when Prime refused the late response.
A factory released pollutants that posed a risk of groundwater harm. After several years passed without cleanup, a third party’s independent dumping became the dominant source of contamination. The extended interval caused the original actor’s responsibility for the final harm to terminate under apportionment rules.
A contractor left an excavation site unsecured after completing work. Two years later a neighboring property owner failed to install barriers, allowing a pedestrian to fall. Because of the passage of time the duty to warn or protect shifted away from the contractor, making the neighbor’s inaction a superseding cause.
Equinox Energy leased warehouse space from Everest Holdings for a five-year term ending December 31. Neither party gave notice or took any action to extend the lease. On January 1 the tenancy terminated automatically, returning possession to the landlord without any affirmative termination notice.
In May 1930 the Van Sweringen Corporation issued $30,000,000 in notes under an indenture naming Guaranty Trust Co. of New York as trustee with power to enforce noteholders' rights. In October 1930 Guaranty and other banks advanced large sums to companies affiliated with the Corporation and controlled by the Van Sweringens. When the Corporation could not meet its obligations, Guaranty participated in an exchange plan under which noteholders could surrender their notes for cash equal to 50 percent of face value plus twenty shares of Van Sweringen stock per $1,000 note; the offer remained open until December 15, 1931. In 1934 respondent York received $6,000 of the notes as a gift from a donor who had not accepted the exchange offer. In April 1940 three accepting noteholders filed the Hackner suit in federal court charging Guaranty with fraud and misrepresentation in connection with the exchange. York's motion to intervene was denied, and summary judgment for Guaranty was affirmed on appeal. On January 22, 1942, after her exclusion from the Hackner litigation, York filed the present class action in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of non-accepting noteholders. The complaint, resting exclusively on diversity of citizenship, alleged that Guaranty had breached its trust by failing to protect noteholders' interests when it assented to the exchange offer and by failing to disclose its own self-interest. The district court granted Guaranty's motion for summary judgment on the authority of the Hackner decision. The Circuit Court of Appeals reversed, holding that a federal court sitting in equity is not required to apply the New York statute of limitations that would govern an identical suit in the New York state courts. The Supreme Court granted certiorari.
View caseElise Everly suffered an injury on March 1, 2010. She filed suit on March 15, 2013. The three-year limitations period had run solely by the passage of time, extinguishing the cause of action regardless of any later discovery or communication between the parties.
Petitioner Calvin Smith was indicted for crimes connected to his role in an organization that distributed cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, and marijuana in Washington, D.C., for about a decade. The 158-count indictment charged Smith and 16 alleged co-conspirators with conspiring to run, and actually running, an illegal drug business, as well as with committing acts of violence, including 31 murders, to further their goals. Smith was tried alongside five codefendants in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. A jury convicted him of conspiracy to distribute narcotics and to possess narcotics with the intent to distribute them, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 846, Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act conspiracy in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1962(d), murder in connection with a continuing criminal enterprise, and four counts of murder while armed. Before trial, Smith moved to dismiss the conspiracy counts as barred by the 5-year statute of limitations under 18 U.S.C. § 3282. He had spent the last six years of the charged conspiracies in prison for a felony conviction. The court denied his motion and Smith renewed his statute-of-limitations defense at trial. In the final jury charge, the court instructed the jury to convict Smith of each conspiracy count if the Government had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the conspiracies existed, that Smith was a member of those conspiracies, and that the conspiracies continued in existence within five years before the indictment. After it began deliberations, the jury asked the court what to do in the event that a defendant withdrew from the conspiracies outside the five-year limitations period. Over the defense's objection, the court instructed the jury that once the government has proven that a defendant was a member of a conspiracy, the burden is on the defendant to prove withdrawal from a conspiracy by a preponderance of the evidence. The jury then convicted Smith of the conspiracy crimes. As relevant here, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit affirmed Smith's conspiracy convictions. The Supreme Court granted certiorari to review the question of which party bears the burden of proving or disproving a defense of withdrawal prior to the limitations period.
View caseEcho Systems appointed Ewan Eckhart as its exclusive sales agent under a one-year agreement that contained no renewal clause. After twelve months elapsed without any extension or new agreement, the agency terminated automatically, freeing both parties from further obligations under the original arrangement.
In November 1966 Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., was duly elected from New York's Eighteenth Congressional District to serve in the 90th Congress. During the preceding Congress a Special Subcommittee on Contracts of the Committee on House Administration investigated expenditures of the Committee on Education and Labor. The subcommittee issued a report concluding that Powell had deceived House authorities about travel expenses and that illegal salary payments had been made to his wife at his direction. The report also found that Powell met the standing qualifications of age, citizenship, and residence. When the 90th Congress organized in January 1967 the House adopted House Resolution No. 1 by a vote of 363 to 65. The resolution appointed a nine-member Select Committee to inquire into Powell's qualifications and alleged misconduct. Powell appeared before the committee but, on advice of counsel, limited his testimony to the three standing qualifications and refused to answer questions about other matters. The Select Committee issued a report finding that Powell met the standing qualifications yet recommending that he be seated, censured, fined $40,000, and deprived of seniority. On March 1, 1967, the House rejected a motion to vote on that recommendation. The House then adopted an amendment calling for exclusion by a vote of 248 to 176 and passed House Resolution No. 278 by a vote of 307 to 116, thereby excluding Powell and declaring the seat vacant. Powell and thirteen voters from his district filed suit in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia against Speaker John W. McCormack, four other House members, and the Clerk, Sergeant at Arms, and Doorkeeper. The complaint alleged that House Resolution No. 278 violated the Constitution because Powell satisfied the standing qualifications and requested declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, and mandamus to compel seating and payment of salary. The district court dismissed the complaint for want of subject-matter jurisdiction. The Court of Appeals affirmed on different grounds, and the Supreme Court granted certiorari. While the case was pending the 90th Congress ended. Powell was reelected in November 1968 and seated in the 91st Congress under a resolution that imposed a $25,000 fine. Respondents filed a suggestion of mootness, but Powell's claim for back salary from the period of exclusion remained unresolved.
View caseAn offeree’s power of acceptance ends when a reasonable time passes without acceptance, even if the offer contains no explicit deadline. Courts measure reasonableness by market conditions, subject matter, and the parties’ communications. Once that period expires, the offer lapses and cannot be revived by a late acceptance.
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Yes. When substantial time passes after negligent conduct, the original actor’s duty to prevent harm may shift to a third person. The later failure of that third person then becomes a superseding cause that cuts off the original actor’s liability.
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Effluxion of time terminates the power of acceptance automatically once a reasonable period expires, without any action by the offeror. Revocation requires an affirmative communication from the offeror before acceptance occurs. Both end the power, but only revocation depends on the offeror’s conduct.
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No. A tort claim is barred by lapse of time only when a statute of limitations applies. The mere passage of time alone does not extinguish the claim unless the statute has run.
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…v. Tyson , is, as Mr. Justice Holmes said, "an unconstitutional assumption of powers by courts of the United States which no lapse of time or respectable array of opinion should make us hesitate to correct." In disapproving that doctrine we do not hold unconstitutional § 34 of the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789 or any other Act…