The question presented by the record is the sufficiency of the plaintiffs' replication to the defendants' plea of the seven-years' statute of limitation. The limitation relied on by defendants is that prescribed by article 2765 of the Code of Tennessee, which is as follows:
'No person, or any one claiming under him, shall have any action, either at law or in equity, for any lands, etc., but within seven years after the right of action has accrued.'
The plaintiffs in error contend that their present action is saved from the bar of this statute by the provision of article 2755 of the Code, which is as follows:
'If the action is commenced within the time limited, but the judgment or decree is rendered against the plaintiff upon any ground not concluding his right of action, or when the judgment or decree is rendered in favor of the plaintiff and is arrested or reversed on appeal, the plaintiff or his representatives or privies may commence a new action within one year after the reversal in arrest.'
The question of law upon which the parties are at issue is whether the judgment rendered February 24, 1877, by which the suit begun December 31, 1873, was dismissed, the dismissal being on the ground that the court had no jurisdiction of the cause of action set out in the declaration, falls within the saving of this section as being rendered on a ground not concluding the plaintiffs' right of action. It is well settled that the judgment of a court dismissing a suit for want of jurisdiction does not conclude the plaintiffs' right of action.
In Walden v. Bodley, 14 Pet. 156, it was said by this court:
'A decree dismissing a bill generally may be set up in bar of a second bill having the same object in view, but when the bill has been dismissed on the ground that the court had no jurisdiction, which shows that the merits were not heard, the dismissal is not a bar to the second suit.'
So in the case of Hughes v. U.S. 4 Wall. 232, this court declared:
'In order that a judgment may constitute a bar to another suit it must be rendered in a proceeding between the same parties or their privies, and the point of controversy must be the same in both cases, and must be determined on its merits. If the first suit was dismissed for defect of pleadings or parties, or a misconception of the form of proceeding, or the want of jurisdiction, or was disposed of on any ground which did not go to the merits of the action, the judgment rendered will prove no bar to another suit.' See also, Greenl. Ev. §§ 529, 530, and cases there cited.